bakerstreet | Sentinels and Guides: still the best AU, I'll fight you and your dad.

Sentinels and Guides: still the best AU, I'll fight you and your dad.

Sentinels and Guides are Known:
A Sentinel!AU Shipping 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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(( m/m either role, any prompts ))

[It's complicated. Marc's definitely a Sentinel, and Steven has probably thought he was a Guide this whole time, if it's even a common enough thing that the general public knows about it.]

[Sentinel with two wildly different Guides? Guide to two wildly different Sentinels? Just a guy caught in between one of each? Regardless of what it is: he's no slouch and no pushover and almost always notices more than he lets on.]

[Could be either, as soon as I think he's one, I think of another reason he'd be the other.]

[Definitely a Sentinel, possibly lab-grown, but maybe just altered. Nothing smutty as she is underage.]

[He's a Guide for sure. Can do something wedged into his canon, or I can AU him into most other canons easily enough.]

[Either the lone Guide for a quartet of overprotective lunatics OR a powerful/unstable enough Sentinel that she needs a quartet of overprotective lunatic Guides to keep her on the level.]

[Being a Guide in the First Order was a more dangerous thing to admit than being Force-sensitive. He's still coming to terms with the fact that he doesn't have to hide that, either.]

[Sentinel who's finally started to get over the loss of her Guide in Riley. Being assigned to each other by the government didn't make losing him any easier.]

[Guide for hire]

[Guide-y-est Guide who ever did Gode.]

[Guide in a family of Sentinels. No wonder he made a break for it as soon as he was able.]

[This is either the beefiest Guide, or the surprisingly-gentlest Sentinel this side of the Nine Realms]

It's one thing to be a Sentinel who's smaller and weaker than nearly every other Sentinel who's ever existed. Steve always hated that. It's true, his talents were just as strong as any other Sentinel's, and it was almost better, because he was forced to use his brain where other Sentinels would just brute force their way through a situation, but Sentinels were meant to protect. How was he supposed to be able to protect when most threats could knock him flat in one hit?

He just had to be smarter than them. And most of the time, he was.

But then it turned out his Guide was a huge, gorgeous, absolute powerhouse of a man, and sure, Steve was never one to let himself be driven by biology or whatever, but it sure did hurt, just a little, to know that his Guide didn't need Steve to protect him. At all. Ever. Steve tried not to dwell on it, tried not to let it fester, but damn it was hard. Every time people judged them, or thought less of them as a team, or tried to see if they could get some other Sentinel and their Guide to help... it hurt.

So yeah. It was a bit of a sensitive subject for Steve. Not even the comments directed at him, necessarily. He was used to those. He even felt like he deserved them. But as soon as anyone brought Thor into it... well. All bets were off.

"Maybe if he went back where he came from, he could be a real Guide, instead of whatever he's playing at here."

In the grand scheme of things that had been said to them, about them, or behind their backs, it really wasn't all that bad. But Steve had been having a difficult day, and this just turned out to be the straw that broke the camel's back.

He immediately whipped around to the source of the comment, fury exploding white-hot under his skin.

"What the hell did you just say?" He stalked toward the man who'd spoken, a guy easily six inches taller than Steve, but he didn't let that stop him. "You want to say that to my face, asshole?"