Sentinel

Rhodey sticks close by Tony after the second attack, which is ridiculous considering they were inside wards and those acted like an elemental barrier to keep Strigoi out. And it was hardly like their classmates were going to attack him and even if they did he’d just use compulsion to get out of it. He’s done it before and it worked just fine. “I’m just being cautious,” Rhodey tells him as they head off to Peggy’s class together. Even Pepper has given up trying to get him to go to the elemental class and she was usually something like Hermione Granger in her attempts to get him to do the school thing.

“You’re a bug up my ass is what you are,” Tony tells him, “but I’ll forgive you if Bucky is right and I’ll like this class.”

That earns him a weird look, “since when do you talk to Bucky?” Rhodey asks.

“Since always, Rhodes. Come on, do you know me to pass up a pretty face?” he asks, grinning in a saucy way that was supposed to draw Rhodey’s attention away from the strange situation. And the situation was strange, Tony realized. Normal students didn’t spend that much time with teachers outside of class and he and Bucky were on strangely good terms. Not that he minded, that pretty face thing was true.

“You passed up Peggy’s,” Rhodey points out.

“That’s because I don’t have a death wish. And she’s my mom’s best friend so.” That just made things weird, and it was also rumored that Peggy had a girlfriend. Though it was weird that she kept her looks, most guardians got a little weather beaten from all the training after awhile but Peggy was still stunning as ever. Hell, even the grey hair was attractive on her even if she didn’t have much of it yet. That was impressive considering her age and his mom was jealous but the grey hair looked elegant on her so Tony didn’t know why she complained.

“It’s still weird that you talk to Bucky. How regular is that?” Rhodey asks. It isn’t until he asks that Tony realizes that the conversations were frequent though harmless.

“Every once and awhile,” Tony lies, “he wanted to know why Peggy was so soft on me.” Rhodey might have detected the lie he told, but at the slight reference to Howard Rhodey winces and his own emotions drown out whatever Tony might have been putting out.

“Oh,” is all Rhodey says.

“Yeah. I told him not to tell her to worry, it wasn’t like I was fond of the man when he was alive and he was downright terrifying when he was undead so.” It was a bad joke and he knew it but he had a weird sense of humor that Pepper and Rhodey had thankfully adjusted to by now.

Rhodey keeps quiet as they enter the gym and Tony grins at what he finds there. “Mum!” he says excitedly, walking over to her.

She raises an eyebrow at him, “don’t you have a class that isn’t this one?” she asks.

“Nope,” Tony lies and Maria knows it too but she leaves him be.

“Told you that you’d like todays class,” Bucky tells him, grinning at him. Tony smiles back, getting the feeling that this was about to get really good. He makes his way to his usual spot in the corner and outright laughs when Peggy gives them the day’s assignment. Today they were learning how to restrain Moroi from attacking, which most of the novices scoffed at until his mom nearly ripped their eyes out.

His laughter was probably pretty distracting; especially to Rhodey given that he felt the amusement through the bond too, but the novices were plain bad at restraining Maria because they were too frightened they were going to hurt her. “I really hope none of their Moroi get attacked by another Moroi or they are so fired,” Bucky says, leaning against the wall beside him. Today’s lesson, Tony guessed, was mostly Peggy getting frustrated at her novices for being useless and telling Maria to stop holding back on them. He didn’t really blame his mom for the restraint, none of the novices were abundantly willing to defend themselves and she couldn’t go off and rip all their ears off. It only took three pounds of force to do it.

“Does that happen a lot?” Tony asks, curious. Sure he’s seen a few scuffles but none that guardians have concerned themselves with unless it was at school. Then they were on it and quick but still.

“If you have a rather mouthy Moroi all the time. I think I spent more time prying Moroi off Steve than Strigoi. He found it amusing, I did not,” Bucky says.

This was the first time he’s ever mentioned Steve on his own and Tony is surprised but he doesn’t want to bring it up and make it weird either. “Sounds like Rhodey doing his best to make sure no one kicks my ass. People are a lot less tolerant since my dad you know, off and Strigoi’d.” Then his mom had off and lit him on fire and then Peggy staked him and honestly it was a mess and Maria had complained that the carpet was new. Tony was a bit upset about it too; he liked that Berber before Howard died on it.

“Is it true? That Maria lit him on fire?” Bucky asks Tony. He winces after a moment, looking uncomfortable but Tony shrugs. Everyone either hated him or wanted the details so this was nothing new.

“Yeah, she lit him on fire. It was kind of funny,” he lies. It was fucking terrifying and he didn’t even know grown men could scream that loud and high pitched but alright. He supposed in a kind of morbid macabre way it was amusing.

“It was him or my son, that wasn’t even a choice,” Maria says from across the room, having caught wind of the conversation. The novices, Tony noticed, were being chewed out by Peggy for not doing their jobs. A lot of them had scratch marks over various body parts but it seems like his mom made them mostly non-lethal and avoided the eyes.

“You can do that though?” one of the novices asks, surprised. Moroi never used their magic like that ever. It was considered sacred and to use it against someone was a nasty offense.

“Apparently, I had no idea until it occurred to me that fire killed Strigoi and I could control fire. I was going to shove him into the fireplace but fire burst from my hands instead and I figured what the hell, that was just as good so I made sure to up the heat,” she says casually. Her face is impassive and she looks unaffected. It was only because he’s known his mom his whole life that Tony could see that she was uncomfortable. Probably because of Howard’s nightmare of a face though, not because she actually felt any guilt for killing him. She told Tony after everything was cleaned up that she might have loved him once, but she was glad to be rid of him. Maybe she had nightmares and maybe she felt guilty, but less because she killed Howard and more because technically she killed someone.

The novices stare at her in shock, half awed half confused because a few of them were still stuck on that ‘Moroi don’t do that with their magic’ thing. Rhodey just looks vaguely sick. Tony tries to send like… comforting feelings or something but ultimately he had no idea if Rhodey was feeling his calming vibes or not. After a few moments Rhodey does look over and smile at him a bit though, indicating that he felt something.

“Alright,” Peggy interrupts before some dumbass continues with the questioning without considering that Maria helped kill her husband, Tony lost his father, and Rhodey just about died and they were all sitting in the room with a bunch of dipwads who thought killing Howard was cool. “Leave Maria alone, at least figuratively. If none of you manage to restrain her without harming her I’ll make you all run suicides until you actually die. Go!” she tells them.

Tony watches in amusement as Maria jumps on the nearest student, who flails uselessly but not at Maria lest he hurt her. “They’re hopeless,” Tony decides and Bucky snorts.

“Clearly. And sorry about that… earlier. They don’t know,” Bucky says. Yet hangs heavily in the air.

“I know,” Tony says somewhat wistfully, “it’ll be sad when their bubbles are burst.”

“It always is,” Bucky agrees softly.

*

Bucky is surprised when Maria comes to find him after class is over mostly because he figured she’d be off to talk with Peggy or whatever it was they did together.

“You seem rather close with my son,” she notes.

He frowns, “well sure, he’s a bright kid. And his commentary is hilarious,” he adds. He was also troubled, deeply so and in denial about it, and Bucky was keeping an eye on him. Tony seemed to be fine lately but he’s gone spacey a few times so he got the feeling that wasn’t going to last. But he wasn’t sure how much of that Maria already knew.

“You seem more fond of him than the students that are in your class,” she adds. It isn’t until she says it that he realizes it’s true, but the novices were always up his ass about random stories they heard about him and Tony never asked about any of that. Instead he broke a bunch of rules and got suspended and then slipped the guards to go hang out in the sunlight for some reason. Since being free he hasn’t found Tony in the sun but he knew it would happen again. How no other guardian has run into him he had no idea. Or, the thought occurs to Bucky; he used compulsion to make them go away. But no, if he did that he’d use it on him too.

“He doesn’t ask about my past,” is all Bucky says but the brief shadow across Maria’s face tells him that she gets what he means.

“I suppose that’s fair. Must be rare for you around here,” she says.

“More so in this damn classroom. Students can be irritating.” Sometimes he wanted to punch them in the face and then thanked his lucky stars that he got a job where hitting the things that were annoying him was actually okay. He tells Maria that too and she laughs.

“I can see why Tony doesn’t seem as… resistant to you as he is with others,” she tells him, smiling softly.

“Resistant?” Bucky asks. Sure, Tony had a reputation around here but Bucky didn’t have much solid evidence that it was earned. Other than some various incidents that Bucky has busted him in and sneaking out of his dorm while he was on house arrest Tony seemed pretty calm compared to the stories. Oh, and skipping his elemental class.

Maria raises an eyebrow, “haven’t you heard the stories? He isn’t nearly as bad now, but before Howard…” She makes a face. Bucky had heard pretty much the same thing but he had the added knowledge that Tony just internalized all that troubled behavior, which was arguably worse.

“I’ve never had any problems,” Bucky says. Except that one time he caught Tony drinking during the day, which is the only incident that Bucky would even consider particularly bad. He was far worse when he was Tony’s age.

Maria squints at him for a long moment, like she was trying to determine if he was lying or something before she shrugs. “Then consider yourself lucky, Tony has some ah… issues with authority figures.”

Weird, Bucky thought, because he didn’t see it. Even in the office with Fury last week he was mostly composed, though he did make several jokes about Fury’s one eye. Including one in which he asked if he was supposed to focus on the patch or the actual eye, which Bucky had to fight not to laugh at. He was supposed to be the mature one there; he couldn’t laugh at some random child’s jokes even if they were hilarious.

*

Tony was sober, mostly, when he runs into Bucky next. Okay, so maybe he took a little something to help with his nerves but for some reason he’s been on edge for the last few days and it was starting to affect Rhodey. He kept asking if Tony was okay and he was, really, he was just in one of those moods again. It’ll pass just like it always did but in the meantime he could do a few things to make sure that Rhodey wasn’t getting his emotional overload leaking into his head and whatever.

“You really should avoid the sunlight. Why is it that I always find you out here? It makes more sense that you’d be inside even if you couldn’t sleep,” Bucky tells him, leaning up against a tree that was close to his little fort. He kind of wished he had something to drink here, preferably something with a high alcohol content.

“Sometimes I like the way the sun makes me feel,” he says, his voice sounding weird and distant in his own ears.

“You like feeling sick?” Bucky asks, frowning.

“Yes… well no… I don’t know,” he mumbles. It wasn’t that he liked feeling sick per se, but sometimes he just wanted to feel something that wasn’t the turmoil inside his head…

Bucky looks down at him for a long moment before he crouches beside him. Tony resents the obviously unobtrusive nature he’s trying to put out there and glares at him. “Your behavior is getting increasingly worrying,” he says, thankfully using a normal tone on him.

He probably would have smacked Bucky if he had tried using one of those soft baby voices on him. “So? It’ll be fine, it always is,” he mumbles. Things just got a little… chaotic in his mind for a little while and then he drank a little or took something and things quieted some. He just needed to wait for the quiet to come back.

“Tony, I can’t just keep pretending I’m not seeing anything. You should talk to someone, maybe that friend of yours, the one that seems determined to protect you from everything,” Bucky says.

“You don’t need to if I make you forget,” Tony says, ignoring the strange lilt to his voice. This sort of thing always happened when his mind got fuzzy and that pill was kicking in now…

Bucky looks shocked that Tony threatened him but Tony doesn’t mind. Most people wouldn’t want to have someone erasing their thoughts against their will, or even with their permission.

“You do know people can shake compulsion, right?” Bucky asks in a low voice, obviously assessing Tony like he was a threat.

Tony supposed he was, at least to Bucky’s mind. “If I made people forget Howard without many issues I can make you forget everything,” he says, smiling almost serenely as his mind fogs a little. Xanax was useful.