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

[not_soft]

Even after this long, she still ate like she expected someone to take it away before she was finished, and she was just a little surprised that he was eating much the same way.

She didn't object when he moved to lay down, that was what she'd told him to do, after all, eat and rest. She moved to the other side of the room herself, not really to keep herself as far from his perceptions as she could, but because that was where her mat was, along with the globe she used to meditate with.

It was a modified glow-globe, one that produced heat instead of just light, various intensities, at random intervals, sometimes shifting rapidly up the scale. If she was truly meditating, she would just absorb the pain, internalize it, turn it into something she could use, but if it hurt her, that meant she wasn't actually in a meditative state and she had to start again.

It was no wonder that Guides caught up in trying to stabilize one of her fugue states ended up burned, if that was the sort of thing she internalized.

[prevailsthelight]

Ben wasn't entirely sure just how long he laid there, unable to sleep despite his exhaustion, but he finally rolled over, trying to get comfortable, and caught sight of Kura in the corner, glow-globe in her lap, hands resting on top. She was far enough away that he had to really focus to pay attention to her emotions, so he just watched.

He blinked slowly, then finally sat up more and slipped out of the bed. He padded to Kura and sat down in front of her. This close, he could feel heat rising from the globe and understood.

This was why the Guides that tried to help her got burned. Fear in the fugue state could very easily morph into pain, and if she associated pain with heat... With a normal Sentinel, the association wouldn't mean much, but for somebody like Kura, who was so powerful with the Force... The Guide currently resting in the medical bay was extremely lucky... He was extremely lucky, to have escaped with only second- and first-degree burns. Lucky neither of them had been wearing long sleeves that could catch fire.

Knowing this was useful, though. If she went into a fugue again, the first thing to do would be to work on the fear. Frustration, anger, and loss could all come second, but the fear was what caused the burns, which was the most dangerous physical part of the whole thing.

Carefully, Ben got back to his feet. He stumbled back to the cot and this time when he curled up under the blankets, he fell asleep almost immediately, exhaustion truly catching up with him.

[not_soft]

She was only barely aware of his movement, his proximity, with him there she'd actually managed to drop into a meditative state quite easily, and there was something to be said for that if nothing else.

It was almost two hours later that she finally finished, and by then he was well and truly asleep, which meant that she had no qualms about leaving him asleep while she showered. She did have meetings to attend, and at least one 'meeting' which really meant an interrogation.

She left him a note when she left, feeling steadier on her feet than she had in recent memory. It was a simple enough thing, just letting him know that she had meetings to attend to and that she'd return at lunchtime with food fo them both and he was welcome to use the shower or the entertainment library while she was gone, but that he wasn't to try leaving without her.

[prevailsthelight]

By the time Ben finally woke up from sleeping, his mouth was full of cotton and he was heavy and warm all over from finally resting. He had woken up once, briefly, and dimly remembered watching Kura move around the room a bit, before drifting off again.

Now he was alone in her quarters. Carefully, he stood - the first thing he tried was the door out to the hall, which beeped at him in a rather angry tone but didn't open. So he was locked in, then. It was to be expected. Even if she hadn't thought to actually lock him in, leadership on the ship would have. He was still an enemy combatant, and wouldn't be trusted to walk the halls alone possibly ever. He'd have to find some way to earn enough trust to be allowed out alone. By Bonding with Kura? If there was a Bond, and she could use it to track him, then as long as he wasn't allowed near a shuttle or fighter there wasn't a place on the ship he could really hide.

He turned away from the door and crossed back to the table. There wasn't much left in the way of leftovers, so he poured himself a glass of juice while reading the note she'd left. So she'd be back at lunchtime, but when was that? HE set down the note, finished his glass, then got up. It didn't take much time at all to find the little bathroom. She had an actual water shower, which was surprising, but no tub which was a bit disappointing. If he was going to be here with her, it was nice to have a soaker tub for after to relax in.

[not_soft]

The reason she had a shower but not a tub was because while she liked water, a lot -being raised on a desert planet would do that- she didn't trust standing water very much, especially not in any volume enough to drown her. Though part of that was because part of her training with Snoke had been -and sometimes still was- being subjected to a torrential downpour, or vast bodies of water, and even though it was all in her head and she knew that, it wasn't easy to remember that during the training.

Ben might even learn that about her, sometime.

She was tired when she returned, almost an hour after he woke, though not on the brink of fugue as she had been the day before, though she likely would have been if he hadn't managed to pull her out of it like he had.

As promised, she did have lunch with her, by way of another kind of broth, thicker than the one at breakfast and filled with diced vegetables, as well as a basket of assorted breads. Kura, it seemed, preferred simpler fare when it came to food. Just as the broth was different than the one at breakfast, so was the juice, something pinkish instead of the yellow-orange of the morning.

[prevailsthelight]

Ben was back to dozing by the time the door opened, so his body reacted automatically to soothe the ruffled feathers of the Sentinel coming in through the door. Until he remembered it was her and he pulled back and sat up in the same movement, watching her step inside with the tray. He drew his knees to his chest and curled his arms around them, then let his head fall to rest on his knees.

He watched her for a few minutes, then carefully got up with a stretch and yawn before padding over to the table. He dropped down onto it and said, "If you're going to make me stay in here all the time, I want something to do to take up time."

[not_soft]

Her brow arched, tearing one of the rolls in half to dip it in her broth, "So you've already watched all of the videos and read all of the books in the library? In not quite five hours, of which I'm sure you were asleep for half of?" She made a curious little sound as she chewed, "I'm impressed, considering that there's years worth of video alone, not counting the books."

Most of those books, and even most of the videos were told from the First Order's point of view, but there were also novels and soap operas that were deemed harmless.

Granted, she hadn't left him a datapad, or told him where the room's screen was, but she'd expected him to be at least a little nosy, but apparently he hadn't been, "You won't be relegated to the room forever, you'll attend my rounds in the future, once I know you aren't going to cause problems with the other Sentinels."

[prevailsthelight]

"You mean you're honestly expecting me to subject myself to hours and hours of First Order Propaganda disguised as entertainment?" Ben raised both his eyebrows at her. "Just because I'm stuck here doesn't mean I'm about to defect from the Republic." There were plenty of Republic Guides who were captured, and at least some never came around to the First Order's perspective.

Not that the First Order wouldn't do its level best of indoctrinate them. Those that could be Bonded to a First Order officer always would be, and that sort of connection would always leave one half of the partnership swaying and nearly always it was the Guide who had been worn down by weeks or months or years of working with the ship's Sentinels.

[not_soft]

That got a small smile, "There's music, too." She replied, "And honestly, most of the videos aren't that bad. Of course, some of them are downright boring, but that's beside the point." She'd never been a fan of most of the soap operas herself, they didn't make sense to her.

Music, however, was something she'd always liked, she even used it to time her meditations now and again.

"And honestly I don't expect you to defect, and I'm certainly not going to let them recondition you." She liked the fight in him, and she wanted to be the one that finally killed it, regardless of how long that took.

[prevailsthelight]

Ben snorted, but started to eat. He watched Kura out of the corner of his eye then said, "You won't let them, but I'm sure you'll take any chance you can get to sway me." He'd honestly rather be back in the torture chair.

He fell silent for a moment, contemplating what would happen if she died - or if he killed her. If there was no Bond, he'd probably go to the crew. If there was, they'd try to force another on him before he wasted out in the aftershock.

"Don't suppose I could ask real nice and you'd let me go home, huh?"

[not_soft]

"You are home." She replied, making a circular gesture with her spoon that somehow encompassed the whole ship and not just her quarters, "I suggest you get used to it."

She, likewise, had felt those first tendrils of a Bond that morning, and had felt him shake them off, though she knew it wasn't something he'd be able to keep doing indefinitely, eventually it would stick, take root, and she wasn't sure if she was looking forward to that -because this was the first time she'd been truly compatible with anyone- or if she was dreading it -because it would be a weakness she could barely afford- but either way she was interested to see how it developed.

[prevailsthelight]

"No, I'm a prisoner of war who's been forcefully drafted into helping the enemy." Ben stared at her for a moment then said, "Even if it's with a guard, I want to be able to walk around in the halls. Or have access to a gym of some sort." He wasn't about to spend the rest of his life lazing around watching vids and waiting on Kura's every word. Every scrap of independence he could get from her, he was going to take.

[not_soft]

She nodded, "If you've recovered you can accompany me on my rounds tomorrow." She had no doubt that she could stop any trouble that might arise from other Sentinels, "And once I know you won't use it as an excuse to try killing me, you can train with me as well, until then I'll make sure you have some time in one of the training rooms, under guard, of course."

Allowing him freedoms now was easy, mostly because it meant she could take them away again later.

[prevailsthelight]

"I'm not recovered," he said immediately and got back up. He crossed to the cot and flopped down onto it, dragging the sheets up over his shoulders. Then he fumbled around until he found the holo remote and turned on the screen, poking around in the menus until finally deciding on something.

[not_soft]

She snorted softly, but didn't say anything about his apparent indecision -demanding something to do and then deciding he didn't want it- instead she just said: "Not hungry? It won't be quite as good cold."

The soup wouldn't be, at least, the bread would be fine, she often kept rolls on hand as a snack, that and fruit, training like she did -even the meditation- burned a lot of energy.

[prevailsthelight]

It wasn't so much that he didn't want to get out of here, but he didn't want to be forced to go with her. At least, not on her rounds, whatever that meant. Instead, he just grunted in response and fiddled with the remote a bit more. "What's the point in taking me with you? It's not like you're leaving the ship, I can get there in minutes if you start freaking out again," he mumbled to himself, lifting a blanket up to muffle his voice even further.

[not_soft]

I'll assign you an honor guard for tomorrow." She said, "You can go to the training rooms, the officer's mess for meals if you wish." That would keep him away from the majority of the ship's Sentinel population at least, "The observation deck, if you'd like."

She paused for thought there, chewing at another bite of roll, "I imagine you've communed with plants as part of your training in the Force. You can visit the atrium, if you like, provided there's no one else using it."

[prevailsthelight]

That... did sound good, actually. The part about visiting the atrium. It was a bit hard to imagine a ship like this having a designated spot for greenery, but he supposed it wasn't unheard of. "Sounds good," he said finally, squirming around until he could see the holo screen more fully, blanket still covering his mouth and most of his head.

Meditating would be good for his mental state. He might have been relatively weak to the Force, but he was strong enough that meditation did him good. He could levitate small objects and understand the needs of animals innately, but much more than that was lost on him.

[not_soft]

"I would prefer if you waited until I could escort you to the officer's mess and to the observation deck, but I won't make it mandatory." Not yet, at least, eventually, probably, but not yet. She wasn't too concerned about letting him learn his way around, either, because there may come a time when he needed to be able to get to her without an escort getting in the way.

"I'll leave the rest of this for if you get hungry later, though it isn't as good cold, I still have a few meetings to attend this afternoon, but I'll be back this evening, you can aid with my meditations then." Which would happen just by the fact of him being in the same room, even if he wasn't actively assisting.