Sentinel

Tony didn’t know why Bucky had such a bug up his ass when it came to him but he was at least hot so when he kept his mouth shut he could appreciate the guy’s presence. He was tall, muscular, a little tanned from his time in the sun. What wasn’t to enjoy? Even the long hair looked nice on him though he still wanted to know how he managed to get it into a perfect bun with only a few artfully stray hairs around his face with only one arm. His hair up also showed off an impressive amount of molnija marks he had, and a two of those little star like markings that meant he’d been in battle and killed too many Strigoi to count. To have that many marks he had to be impressive, especially when he was so young but Tony’s interest in Bucky’s skill was less related to his ability to kill things.

But since Bucky had taken an interest in Tony he took an interest in Bucky right back. He had done a little research, learning that his last charge Steve Rogers had been killed in that Strigoi attack a few months ago. According to the reports Tony managed to dig up the guardians had been drugged- presumably by the catered drinks though the Moroi weren’t drugged at all, which led to some speculation as to how only the guardians managed to ingest the drugs. Simple, in Tony’s opinion- the Moroi probably stuck to a blood only drinking diet at that point in the occasion. Had the Strigoi waited a half hour the Moroi probably would have been out of it too.

The wards had also been broken around the property, which was what indicated human involvement. Strigoi couldn’t pass the elemental wards Moroi could cast around their properties, nor could they touch the charmed stakes that could break the wards. Humans would have had to do it and evidence suggested the stakes had been there for awhile, like the wards were broken during the day. Strigoi couldn’t go out during the day so humans it was. Granted it could have been Dhampirs too but Tony didn’t think anyone considered that and the evidence would sooner suggest humans than Dhampirs, who were raised to loath Strigoi. There had been some speculation on how the guardians didn’t notice the broken wards but someone had suggested that they were broken closer to the end of the day after the guardians would have checked the wards. Strigoi still couldn’t have broken the wards so the reports led back to human involvement.

Regardless of being drugged by the punch Bucky had done fairly well, killing off something like five Strigoi before he had been dispatched himself. The Strigoi had caught him when he stumbled across Steve’s dead body- they had been separated in the commotion and Bucky’s focus had been hazy due to the drugs- and when the Strigoi caught up with him, well. They probably figured ripping his arm clean off his body would have killed him but Bucky was a lucky bastard. When the reinforcements showed up some time later, confused as to why the guardians at the party hadn’t responded for awhile they found Bucky mostly dead at the scene.

Several of the Moroi had been gone or disfigured beyond recognition and the guardians hadn’t faired much better than Bucky. He was missing an arm, had one hell of a hangover, and some other minor injuries and he had been one of the lucky ones. None of the Strigoi had even tried to make a meal out of him and his colleagues hadn’t been so lucky. It had been odd but Bucky had reported being conscious for most of the attack and he had obviously lost a lot of blood due to the whole having his arm ripped off thing so the guardians figured the Strigoi were full and had Moroi snacks for later so they didn’t bother with a mostly dry for blood Bucky. Strigoi preferred Moroi blood to Dhampir blood and Bucky staying alive for so long saved him from becoming a snack. Tony figured that was pretty logical, if he were a Strigoi he’d leave Bucky behind too.

Reports of Bucky disappeared for a couple months after that but he reappeared on the scene shortly before coming to the Academy. No one expected him to return to duty with one arm, plenty of people thought a perfectly good guardian was wasted due to his new disability but Bucky was nothing if not determined. Shortly before being contacted by the school he had been at some event and noticed a Strigoi in the bushes and staked it, one arm and all. People were back to buzzing about him being the best after that, even if it had a note of offensive language attached to it. He was now amazing because he only had one arm, not because he had an incredible amount of skill. Not that it was that surprising to Tony that people didn’t just ignore the arm thing to look at the facts. Bucky was good before, it stood to reason that if he was determined enough to work with the way his body was now he’d get at least some of that talent back.

Judging from the way he tossed the novices around in class he didn’t lose much, if any, of his previous talent. It was almost amusing to watch the novices assume that Bucky’s lack of an arm was a weakness, at least until it got flat out annoying. “Oh for fucks sakes, would you all stop going for his left side?” Tony snaps one day when he gets particularly annoyed with their attempting to attack from that side only.

“Shut up Stark, you don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Justin Hammer snaps at him.

“Well clearly neither do you, you keep going for his left side exactly like every single one of you minus Rhodey has for the last fucking month. That isn’t even his weak side,” Tony tells him and the rest of the class. Both Rhodey and Peggy look impressed with this assessment but the rest of the novices look annoyed.

“The fuck are you talking about, in case you haven’t noticed he had an entire arm missing on his left side,” one of the other novices, Fuckwit McGee Tony was going to call him now, says.

“Language,” Peggy tells them lightly. She didn’t really care, Tony knew, given that she didn’t tell them to cut it out from the beginning.

“Yeah, we all know he had an entire arm missing there but you guys have all been going for that side from day one. Even if that didn’t make your moves extremely predictable he used to be left handed. You’re all going for his dominant side when he isn’t nearly as good with his right hand as he was with his left, when it was still you know, attached,” he says, shrugging.

Bucky starts laughing, doubling over after a couple minutes and continuing on for so long that everyone in the room minus Peggy and Tony were uncomfortable. “You guys really, really need to step up your game if a Moroi student noticed that before the rest of you. He has no background in self defense, all he’s done is sit in on a few classes and he managed to figure out that I used to be left handed, making attacking me from the right much easier for you. By now I’m so used to handling attacks from my left that I’m fully confident I’d be able to handle Strigoi going for that side with almost no issues thanks to how damn predictable you’ve all been. Thank you Tony for being the only one in this class, apparently, to look past the obvious to see what was underneath. Care to explain to the class how you noticed this?” he asks.

“Your writing is way messier than it used to be,” Tony says without thinking. Bucky and Peggy frown at him, clearly confused. “I uh… dug up some guardian records I definitely shouldn’t have been able to get into?” he says, the statement coming out more like a question than a statement. “Anyways I was surprised at that given that most people are right handed so I started paying attention to the way you move. It’s obvious to me that standing the way you do when you anticipate attacks, with your right ahead of your left, isn’t entirely second nature to you. You’re good of course, but I can see that you have to think about it. Peggy never has to think about her stances. Hence you were left handed before your arm took a one way trip to Byebyeville,” Tony tells them, shrugging and hoping that they all forgot about that swiping guardian records thing.

Peggy does not forget about that unfortunately, but she does tell him that he was a better student than all of her students before telling Bucky to take him to the principal. Tony was annoyed but at least Rhodey got some minor praise from Peggy for either noticing what Tony did or being smart enough to try and disable Bucky’s only other arm, which would make him far easier to handle in a fight. Tony wasn’t looking forward to Fury and his one-eyed glory because he kind of hated Tony but whatever. He did technically break some major rules so he guessed he deserved this.

“I’m impressed,” Bucky tells him as they walk out of the gym.

Tony shrugs, “once I knew what to look for it was easy,” he says honestly.

“You outsmarted a class of novices who have been at this for years, give yourself some credit Tony. That was more than a little impressive, rule breaking aside,” Bucky tells him, looking down at Tony with a fond look. There was a bit of respect there that hadn’t been there before and Tony decides to take it.

“So if I told you to let this go…” he starts and Bucky laughs.

“No can do, Tony. Peggy is a witness and besides, this is just good old fashioned breaking the rules. This I can handle without fanciness and all of that,” he says.

Tony grumbles but accepts his fate, making no less than twelve jokes about Fury and Bucky bonding over their missing body parts. Bucky pauses outside of the building and Tony pauses with him, hoping he reconsidered Tony’s offer to forget about this whole stealing guardian records thing. Rhodey was going to beat his ass later for doing that but probably only because he hadn’t invited him along. But he hadn’t wanted Rhodey to get in trouble too.

“You know you’re the only one who ever mentions the arm? Even Peggy avoids the subject. Why is that?” Bucky asks, head tilted to the side. He doesn’t look offended or anything like that so that was good, Tony didn’t set out to insult the guy or anything like that.

He shrugs, “everyone has been working really hard at not treating you differently because of the arm, but never mentioning it is treating you differently. They’d never go so far out of their way to avoid talking about you having two arms so why go out of the way to not talk about you only having one? You know you have one arm, everyone else knows you only have one arm, no sense in pussyfooting around it,” he points out.

Bucky smiles at him, showing off a really nice set of white teeth that he had no right to have considering how often he probably got punched in the face. “Well I appreciate that you do it. Everyone else is too scared of offending me but refusing to talk about it is actually worse than not doing that because I know they’re doing it. I’d rather they follow your lead and point out the obvious. I know I have a disability, no sense in pretending I’m the same as I was. Now get your butt through the door, I want to see Fury glare you down with his good eye and if I’m really lucky he’ll whip out his bad eye and glare at you with that too,” Bucky says.

Tony throws his head back and laughs, half hoping that Fury got the bad eye out due to sheer curiosity.

*

Pepper looks so unimpressed but Tony wasn’t too concerned, it was Rhodey he was more concerned about. “Can we not tell him I got a weeks worth of in school suspensions?” he asks her, batting his eyelashes at her. He could have used compulsion to get what he wanted right away but he would never use that on her against her will. He only used it on people he didn’t like or people that liked to compare him to his father, not friends. He’d been tempted to use it on Fury but something told him the suspicious man would be rather resistant to it and he didn’t want to press his luck.

Pepper looks past him and smiles pleasantly, “hello Rhodey, Tony got a weeks worth of in school suspensions for stealing guardian records,” Pepper tells him right away.

“Traitor,” Tony hisses at her. Pepper just gives him a pleasant smile and he slumps in his seat as Rhodey glares at him.

“What were you thinking Tony?” he asks. He was thinking that he wanted dirt on the dude who knew just a little too much was what he was thinking but he couldn’t tell Rhodey that he was out during the day again, he’d get all protective and stuff. Then Tony would be forced to tell him other stuff that he wasn’t comfortable with and then he’d be offended if he found out Bucky knew first.

“All the novices are still on about how he’s a god and all that, I figured I’d look up his record myself,” Tony lies easily. Rhodey falls for it without question because Tony was naturally a curious little bastard and this wasn’t the first time he’s gotten ahold of school records due to that curiosity.

“God damnit Tony, could you not?” Rhodey asks.

“I could but where’s the fun in that?” he asks flippantly. “Also what’s going on over there?” he asks, nodding towards the door to the dorm where it looked like some amount of commotion was happening. If there was a fight happening he was so here for that. Moroi never fought and it was funny to watch them slap at each other uselessly while the Dhampirs shouted fighting techniques at the Moroi they wanted to win. They always got so annoyed when the Moroi didn’t do it right too, which never ceased to amuse Tony.

Rhodey looked ready to tell Tony not to change the subject or something similar but Pepper was looking too and she also looked confused. Rhodey turns to see the commotion and sighs, getting up to see what was going on, glaring at Tony to get him to stay when he tries to go with him. He was totally going to miss the fight because Rhodey would definitely white knight the situation and break it up, which, boo.

But when Rhodey gets there his back suddenly goes ramrod straight and Tony frowns, leaning forward in a new kind of interest. “Something bad has happened,” Pepper says in a soft tone, voicing Tony’s thoughts exactly.

When Rhodey comes back he looks unnaturally pale compared to the usual rich brown of his skin and he sits down, looking like he needed the rest. “There’s been another attack,” he says quietly, “nine dead, five of them were guardians.”

Well shit.