Sentinel

The next time Bucky sees Tony he’s perched in the corner of the room watching the novices beat each other up. They’re all still looking at Bucky out of curiosity but most of them have calmed in his presence with enough of Peggy telling them to pay attention. He thinks that her managing to land a full hit in on some Justin kid because he wasn’t paying attention to her training methods snapped them out of their staring. It was amusing to watch Peggy get annoyed, especially in a position where her job allowed her to smack those that weren’t listening.

“Shouldn’t you be in class?” he asks Tony, who was carelessly lounging on the ground out of the way. Peggy, he noticed, did her best to ignore him. It was odd but he knew to leave the woman be.

“Shouldn’t you be minding your own business?” Tony shoots back but the tone isn’t particularly rebellious at the moment.

“Well technically I’m an instructor so your classes are my business,” he points out.

“Well I’m not skipping,” Tony lies.

“Your ass when Peggy kicks you out,” Bucky says, leaving the kid be. Mostly he just wanted to see how Peggy handled the loiterer. It wasn’t as if Moroi hung out in novice classes all that often, she’d certainly notice him over there.

Imagine his surprise when she didn’t say anything at all. When he glances over at Tony he gets a triumphant grin, like he knew that was going to happen, and Bucky doesn’t like it. Unfortunately for him he had novices to deal with. Like the other morning he notices right away the differences between Rhodey and the rest of his classmates but it wasn’t a surprise. When you had no idea the toll killing Strigoi would take you thought it was awesome, then you actually killed one and had a mental breakdown. But it matured you too, and clearly the experience with Tony’s father was enough to sharpen Rhodey’s focus beyond that of his classmates.

Peggy pairs them for sparring first, likely capitalizing on this maturity so that his classmates could actually learn something before having their asses handed to them. They would all assume that his lacking an arm would make things easy but it wasn’t as if this was the first time he’s fought with a limb out of order, it just so happened that the out of order limb was outright gone. Rhodey, however, knew better than that and he watched Bucky closely as he circled him, examining his movements. Trying to determine how much, if any, skill Bucky lost with his arm if he had to guess. Smart move.

Rhodey makes the first move, going for Bucky’s weaker side but he deflects the attack easily. He could tell Rhodey hadn’t put much effort into the punch either, he just wanted to test Bucky’s reflexes, how he would react to an attack. Smart move number two. Bucky is the one who makes his next move, landing two hits and pushing Rhodey outside of the lines he was supposed to stay in but he learned fast. By the time Peggy broke it up Rhodey was sweating from exertion and Bucky was barely breathing hard. The rest of the class looked confused, mostly because they had heckled Rhodey in the beginning for taking so long to take advantage of Bucky’s ‘obvious’ weakness but now they weren’t sure if his loss of an arm was a weakness at all.

“Nice job, Rhodes, but in the real world Strigoi don’t wait for you to figure how exactly how much missing an arm might hinder their movements. Think quicker on your feet next time,” Bucky tells him.

“Does that even happen?” one of the other novices asks, frowning.

“Yes, you run into Strigoi with disabilities and you shouldn’t underestimate them. They’re just as deadly as the average Strigoi, more so if they’re particularly intelligent,” he says. More than once he’s seen people hesitate or underestimate Strigoi due to their disabilities and it rarely ended well. They were rare, Strigoi with some kind of physical disability, but he’s seen enough of them.

The students look to Peggy and she nods, “it happens and Bucky is right, run into any Strigoi that is intelligent and your job is a whole lot more difficult, disability or no.”

“I thought that being Strigoi healed all of that,” some other student says, confused.

“Not always,” someone else says airily. Bucky looks over to find Tony looking over at them thoughtfully. “Mostly things like mental illnesses, the less severe ones anyways, and asthma and stuff disappear. Most physical ailments stay but some might go. No one is sure how or why some problems stay and some go so I suppose you should all watch out of a one armed badass that packs a bite as well as a punch,” Tony quips. How he knew that Bucky had no idea. Disabilities weren’t covered in novice classes ever, he knew, and it had only come up now because of his arm.

“Hm. Think you could kill a Strigoi with only one arm?” one of the other students asks, head tilted to the side.

“Of course, actually I have. Took awhile to get used to the way I have to move now though,” Bucky says. He was used to the weight of the arm there, balancing his movements and now he had to move in a whole new way. It took time to relearn how to be deadly.

The students all jump in with questions, wanting to hear the story, blah, blah. Usual novice stuff. Rhodey, Bucky notices, stays out of it though. He’d have to ask Peggy more about that later. For the time being he had to deal with wrangling a bunch of antsy teens into cooperating, which he managed by essentially telling them all to attack at once.

From the corner of the room he sees Tony watching as he tosses the students around, experience making him far more talented than them even with his being slightly unused to missing an arm. Rhodey stays mostly out of the mess too, but he is the only student who lands more than a half a hit so Bucky resolves to pay more attention to his abilities. He was going to be one hell of a guardian.

*

Tony had no idea why Rhodey tried so hard in class if he wanted to be Tony’s guardian. Thanks to his piece of shit father his whole family was shamed and if Rhodey was the best he’d get assigned to some other important Moroi, not Tony. Guardians were a limited resource and there was a good possibility Tony wouldn’t even get a guardian after his father’s stunt. His mom didn’t have one anymore despite the fact that Royals always had at least one guardian. Everyone else had to fight for them. Tony was kind of pissed that he was being treated like commonwealth but only because he knew the rules were unfair to them.

Rhodey worked his ass off nonetheless and Bucky noticed that even before class. Peggy noticed too and Tony noticed the obvious favoritism on her part. Granted being Peggy Carter’s favorite was ass because she had a habit of pushing you way harder than everyone else. Rhodey took that with far more grace than Tony would have, always adjusting to her new expectations and surpassing them every time. His classmates were always jealous because Peggy trusted him with things they weren’t trusted with and sometimes that was usually some pretty juicy guardian gossip. He wasn’t supposed to tell anyone but he always told Tony what was going on. Tony felt that was sufficient compensation for that pesky bond they had.

It had started after Howard and it was mostly just Rhodey noticing little things, like how Tony was feeling but neither of them thought anything of that. Rhodey usually knew what Tony was feeling anyways so it wasn’t new. Tony had no idea how long or how much the bond developed before Rhodey noticed that it wasn’t just hunches anymore, that he could actually feel how Tony was feeling. When he told Tony about it finally- Tony felt nothing of the bond on his end- he had no idea what triggered it. He had his suspicions given the events that followed the next week but no proof.

The guardian gossip, Tony felt, would have been mandatory to hand over even before the bond but now Rhodey could slip into his head and experience life through his eyes so he felt it was ten times more mandatory. That hadn’t been a fun discovery and it only happened when his emotions were running high, which was always. Oh, and his sex life got shot in the face when he risked a walk of shame in the sun and when he ran into Rhodey he couldn’t look him in the eye. Apparently arousal counted as emotions running high and Rhodey saw some poor person naked when he probably never wanted to see that, which is fair. But still. Tony liked to whine.

He did, however, find workarounds not that he’d ever tell Rhodey about them. Alcohol was an obvious one; it made the bond feel fuzzy and muted. Rhodey typically picked up on that one given what he felt on his end but if Tony took a Xanax or Valium first Rhodey didn’t even notice. It kept his emotions more steady and must have done something to the bond to make it feel normal to Rhodey because he never noticed if Tony drank if he took either one of those first. And it had the added benefit of making him feel less crazy on any given day. Pot also helped but sometimes Rhodey noticed, Tony had no connection to determine why Rhodey only noticed sometimes. His guess was that sometimes he was paying more attention than others so he generally only smoked if he knew Rhodey was busy, it decreased his risk of being busted.

Logically he knew why Rhodey was always on his ass about the drinking and the drugs but he didn’t get it, didn’t… well actually he did but that was part of the problem too. Sometimes a guy wanted some privacy, he was entitled to that. And he figured that maybe Rhodey wanted his own time too, time where he didn’t have to worry about being sucked into Tony’s head. Or he hoped so otherwise his best friend was a total creeper.

The weird thing was that Tony was pretty sure Rhodey didn’t mind the bond being there, being sucked into Tony’s head and all because it made him feel better that he knew, if he chose to look, when Tony was safe and when he wasn’t. Granted most days the only thing Rhodey had to save him from was himself but still, he thought it make Rhodey feel better to know for sure what was going on. It almost made Tony feel bad for purposefully finding ways to skirt the bond but not bad enough to stop it. There were things in his mind he didn’t want anyone to see, Rhodey especially, and he just… he just needed time away was all. It was hard when someone had full access to your mind without any ability to control it. So Tony went and found ways to control it himself. Problem technically solved.

Rhodey looks over at him then like he could guess what Tony was thinking but Tony doesn’t let anything show on his face. He hopes his mind is as clear as he knew his face was but he doubts it when Rhodey frowns at him a little, silently asking him what was wrong. Tony shakes his head because nothing was wrong, not exactly. It was nothing Rhodey needed to worry about.

*

Peggy doesn’t say anything about Tony’s presence in her class and when Bucky tries to ask she sends him off to do other things. She was avoiding the subject but he didn’t know how to bring that up without sounding accusatory. He ends up slinking off to do the things she asked of him before he was stuck on guard duty during the day. It wasn’t going to be fun, staying up for the full vampire day- technically night time- and the full human day but he’s done it more times than he could count. Steve used to get sick and he was stubborn, he hated doctors so Bucky was usually the one to take care of him until his sickness was out of Bucky’s general knowledge.

It meant he had to pull a lot of all nighters but he never minded. He had never minded doing anything that kept Steve safe, including avoiding vacations but in the end that hadn’t been enough…

He catches something move out of the corner of his eye and frowns, thinking he might have only seen a branch move or something when a twig snaps. Definitely someone walking then. “Hello?” he asks, wondering if maybe one of the other guardians on duty came this way or something. It wasn’t a Strigoi, they couldn’t handle sunlight at all so at least there was some comfort in that. His guess was that some stray Dhampir was hanging around for whatever reason so he circles where he heard the noise. The last thing he expects is to find a Moroi student standing there with a hand behind his back.

“Tony?” he asks, frowning. He looked like shit, probably the product of being out in the sun, and he looked guilty. “Are you hiding a bottle of alcohol behind your back?” he asks as the breeze picks up.

“No,” Tony lies, looking at the ground.

Even if Tony didn’t have an abundantly obvious tell he hadn’t stuck the cap back on the bottle, Bucky could feel the smell burning his nose. He gives Tony a look and he sighs, “I’ll go back to my dorm quietly if you don’t rat me out,” he mumbles.

“Sure,” Bucky says agreeably enough, “after you hand over that bottle.”

Tony glares at him for a long few moments before he snorts, “no,” he says in a snarky, defiant tone.

Bucky’s eyebrows shoot up because he’s never actually had this happen to him. Students, on the rare occasion he had to deal with them before Steve died, were either in awe of him or terrified of him. They didn’t tend to put up a fuss like Tony looked determined to. “Give me the bottle or you can have fun in the office,” he tells him, disliking how stupid the threat sounded. It was a significant downgrade from his usual ‘get the hell away from that Moroi or I’ll fucking cut your head off’. Usually he didn’t actually cut off a Strigoi’s head, staking them was far easier, but still.

“Oh please,” Tony snaps, “as if I’ll get in that much trouble for being a typical student drinking a little after class.” He rolls his eyes and does his best to put out an air that suggested he didn’t care but there was something in the undertone of his voice that intrigued Bucky.

Tony didn’t seem intent on cooperating so Bucky decides to exploit it. He was good at exploiting the weaknesses of his opponent after all, it was what he was trained to do. He snorts, “oh sure, a Moroi student getting drunk outside at high noon is absolutely completely normal student behavior. If this was some kind of normal activity then where are your friends? Drunk students are terrible at keeping quiet, I would have noticed if someone other than you was out here. And other Moroi don’t tend to prefer the sunlight, you don’t either. So either give me that bottle or you can explain to whatever teacher is awake at this hour what you were doing drinking alone at noon,” he says in a tone that was annoyingly teacher-like. God, if Steve could see him now. He’d probably laugh his ass off at the idea of Bucky being a responsible adult.

Actually he was negotiating with a teenager to hand over alcohol for silence so maybe he wasn’t the most responsible of adults. That didn’t surprise him any honestly, he never had any illusions about being good at this job but Peggy had strangely high hopes.

Tony’s glare holds enough heat that Bucky was shocked he didn’t drop dead from the passion behind it alone. Jeeze, what was with this kid? “Fine,” Tony snarls, holding out the bottle he was holding behind his back. Bucky goes to take the bottle but Tony holds onto it for a moment, leaning in towards him. “And next time you want to worry about someone’s issues you should worry about your own, you have more than me,” he says. The anger seems to melt off his face as he frowns at Bucky. No, at the space around Bucky.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks.

“You’re marked with death, I can see it,” Tony says in a strangely sober tone, still frowning at the air around Bucky’s figure.

“What?” Bucky asks, more confused than before.

“Death has touched you, but you escaped. I can see it,” Tony tells him. Bucky might have asked what the fuck he was even talking about again but he lets go of the bottle then, spinning around walk walking away faster than Bucky would have given him credit for considering he had to be at least buzzed from that alcohol.

Tony’s words haunt him for the rest of the night- well, day- because they were so odd. Sure, he’s almost died a few times, but being marked by it? He had no idea what that meant or why Tony wasn’t even looking at him; he was more focused on the space around him. Distractions were dangerous, he knew, but he couldn’t help but puzzle over Tony’s strange reactions.