Sentinel

The guardians, Tony has noticed, were moving around a hell of a lot considering it was the ass crack of dawn. Well, technically it was the ass crack of late afternoon but still. “What’s up with the guardians?” he asks Rhodey when he meets him by the feeder building.

Rhodey shrugs, “no clue,” he says irritably. Huh, weird. While he waits for a feeder to be free he examines Rhodey’s aura and the black that shrouded it at all times. It looked a little darker today, which was weird but alright. He’d been thinking since he last saw Bucky about Rhodey’s shadows because they were so weird. Shadows, in Tony’s experience, were linked to mental illness and sometimes physical illness if it was nasty enough. Rhodey had no signs of mental or physical instability but his shadow was always dark.

Shadow kissed…

Tony had no evidence that shadow kissed referred to the aura though and how would anyone even know that? He’s the only one that could see auras to his knowledge. He was also the only one that could heal to his knowledge as well but he suspected that someone else could too. There was no way statistically that he was the only one with these abilities in history. That was just too ridiculous. But for now he was all the research material he had so he had to do something with his abilities.

Bucky said he felt better than normal after being healed by Tony and the guilt in his aura reflected that as well. Usually when he noted guilt in Bucky’s aura it was a greenish brown color but this time it was just a light green- normal guilt instead of guilt induced by mental illness. If Tony had to guess Bucky either had depression or PTSD, both were common in guardians from what he’s seen. Rhodey’s shadows didn’t look like any of those things and Tony’s limited experience with other mental illnesses has shown him that Rhodey’s shadows didn’t match any of those either. They were like their own specific kind of shadows and that was just odd. Unfortunately for him Rhodey was his only test subject for the shadows too so he reaches out, placing his hand on Rhodey’s forearm and drawing up that weird magic of his.

He focuses on the shadows and after a moment some of them leave, but most remain even when he pushes more magic at Rhodey. “Tony,” Rhodey hisses, “stop that.” He takes his arm back and tony huffs in annoyance.

“I was testing something,” he mumbles. Rhodey looks ready to argue but his name gets called and he goes off to the feeder he’s been assigned to, Rhodey at his side. Tony had no idea why he even bothered to come with him to these things given that being around Tony when he drank blood made him queasy. Tony was sure it had something to do with that ridiculous stigma against Dhampirs who let Moroi drink their blood, especially during sex, but Tony personally saw no issue with it. Rhodey was a member of the stigmatized race though so he figured maybe the whole blood thing wigged him out more because of it.

Rhodey ignores him as he takes the feeder’s blood and the feeder mostly ignored him too, likely already high from someone else biting them earlier. Tony would feel bad about it if they didn’t actually like being here, even if their enjoyment was mostly due to their addiction to Moroi endorphins from the bites. A guy had to eat though.

“What was it you were testing?” Rhodey asks in a low voice when they leave the feeders.

“I… the other day, when I healed Bucky I healed shadows out of his aura. Usually those are a sign of mental instability of some kind and I didn’t think I could heal that kind of thing but I did and… well your aura is almost always black. There’s color in it like everyone else’s of course, but it’s all surrounded in black and I don’t know, I thought I could heal it out. But I didn’t really do much,” he says, frowning at the air around Rhodey.

“Well you did something because I woke up in a retched mood. I almost beat the shit out of Justin Hammer pretty much because he was talking. Whatever you did I don’t feel that anymore,” he says.

Tony sighs, “if only you had followed through on that impulse. The world would be better off without Hammer,” he says wistfully.

“Tony,” Rhodey says in a serious tone, “I’m not kidding here, something was way off. I never get that angry at anyone for anything. It’s just not in my nature.”

He looks genuinely worried and Tony doesn’t get it, sure that was really weird but everyone had bad days. But Rhodey looked particularly bothered so he sighs, “well, some of your spots disappeared so I guess I’ll keep an eye on them, see of they do anything more weird than normal.” It was the best he could do really but he sees Rhodey visibly relax.

“Thank you. I… I don’t know, it was just like this irrational wave of anger that was only getting worse before I just left the dorm to find you. But when you uh… did your thing it was gone,” he says.

To his knowledge he couldn’t heal bad moods but he supposed if some of the black in Rhodey’s aura disappeared there was something else there. Maybe. He had no idea because Rhodey’s aura was already so odd.

*

They all discover that the guardians found some information on where some Strigoi were and in a turn of events they did something unprecedented. They chose to hunt the Strigoi down. Tony hadn’t thought much of it until he heard that Bucky had gone along and then he’s worried for the rest of the day. Even he knew he was acting weird, and he especially knew that everyone else was worried when Loki and Rhodey shared a look. Pepper alright, that made sense because she didn’t hate Loki but Rhodey? He’s not been fond of him since day one.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Pepper asks as they head back to the Moroi dorm that night, well, morning technically.

“I’m fine,” he mumbles, knowing he isn’t at all convincing. Pepper gives him a look and Tony sighs, “I’m worried about Peggy,” he lies. It wasn’t that he wasn’t worried about her, of course he was, but he knew she could handle herself. Tony has seen Bucky take on the novices but they weren’t even as close as dangerous as Strigoi were.

Pepper laughs and then looks like she feels bad about it almost immediately after, “sorry Tony but Peggy Carter is one of the best guardians in history. You’ve seen her in action, you know she’ll be fine,” she says.

“Lance Hunter was an amazing guardian too, he’s dead now,” Tony points out. Being good didn’t save you from death and Bucky, well he was used to having two arms, he was grief stricken from losing his Moroi, and Strigoi were fucking terrifying. All of those things could get him killed easily, especially that whole losing Steve thing.

“They’ll be back by the end of the night Tony, they’ll be alright,” she says softly. Tony hopes so but he doesn’t say anything else and Pepper lets him go in favor of heading off to her dorm.

For a while he spends time in his room trying to fall asleep but his body refuses to do the sleep thing so he sighs and gets up, figuring maybe he should just research or something. He’s almost at the library when he almost literally runs into a guardian and jumps.

“Sorry,” he says quickly, jumping back.

“Watch it,” the guardian snarls and Tony resists the urge to take another step back because whoa that guy’s aura was dark. Black spots were all over the place in it and he’s never seen someone with that much black in their aura. It was different than Rhodey’s aura though, he could see that this guy’s spots were due to trauma, something that was hardly unusual for a guardian.

“Erik! Be polite,” a new, accented voice says. When the guy rounds the corner and spots Tony his bright blue eyes went wide, “you have a golden aura,” he says and he breaks into a bright smile.

Out of the corner of his eye he can see the black spots in Erik’s aura shift, some of them leaving entirely though Tony got the feeling that wasn’t permanent. But he focuses what the new guest just said to him. “Did… did you just say aura?” he asks almost too softly to hear.

“Yes, you have a golden aura! That… can you do… strange things, unexplained things?” he asks, speaking rapidly.

“No,” Tony lies immediately, not sure what to make of this and without Rhodey he wasn’t giving anything up. He didn’t know who this guy was or what he might want. He’s never seen him before but he knew enough to know he was Royal. The way he carried himself was a dead giveaway. And the fact that he had a guardian.

“That’s a lie, I can see it in your aura, honestly you should know better. Can you read minds?” he asks.

“Charles!” Erik all but yells at him, looking remarkably like Rhodey when he disapproved of something Tony just did. Did guardians all have the same disapproval face or something?

“He has a golden aura, Erik! He’s like me!” Charles protests, waving an arm around.

“He just said he couldn’t do anything unexplainable,” Erik says with his teeth gritted together. Tony itches to reach out and take the dark spots from his aura…

“And I can see that he lied. Come on now, what can you do? Enter people’s dreams?” Charles asks and Erik lets out an annoyed, exasperated noise.

“What? You can do that? Come on, why couldn’t I get that instead of the stupid auras?” he mumbles.

Charles lets out a loud whoop and jumps up and down, “so you are like me! I thought I was the only one! What else can you do?” Charles asks, eyes bright with excitement.

“I can heal pretty efficiently. Really efficiently actually, I brought my best friend back from the dead but don’t tell him that. He doesn’t remember dying. And I can see auras but that’s it. Oh wait, and I’m really good at compulsion. Did you say you could read minds? And that you can enter people’s dreams? Because that’s fucking cool. Also how did you know a golden aura meant I was like you?” he asks suspiciously.

Charles rolls his eyes, “oh come on, don’t be daft. You’ve never seen anyone with a golden aura have you? And besides that I can feel you using your magic because you were looking at Erik’s aura. Also did you say you brought someone back from the dead? Because that is much cooler than mind reading. I rather dislike the gift,” Charles says, wrinkling his nose delicately.

Tony wasn’t so sure, that sounded cool to him. “Yeah I uh… I brought him back from the dead. I’m Tony Stark,” he says in way of an actual explanation.

It does it’s job because Charles winces in sympathy, “oh, well that’s rather unfortunate but never mind all of that, come into the library he have to talk. I’ve got about a million questions for you and well I’ve never met anyone like me before!” Charles says, brightening as quickly as his mood dampens. Tony is mostly grateful for it as he follows Charles into the library to see exactly what the hell was going on. He still half thought Charles was faking it with this aura thing. There was no way he’s met someone else like him, it was just too unlikely… right?

*

Charles learns that Tony has completely different abilities than him and, like him; he’s been researching what exactly was happening to him. “When I was in school I just thought I hadn’t specialized,” Charles says. It was rare, extremely rare, but it happened.

“Me too, but I mean I don’t have power like yours at all. How the hell did you figure out that you can read minds?” he asks.

That causes him to sigh as he leans back in his chair. “I…” he trails off for a moment, unsure how to explain this bit to a teenager. “I didn’t have a very good home life,” is what he settles on and unfortunately he can see the empathy and pain in Tony’s aura that indicated he didn’t have a very good home life either. He’d talk to him about that later, see if he could help. “Anyways my step brother Cain was… tormenting me,” he says and Erik snorts from a few book rows away. Charles shoots him an unimpressed look and continues with his story. “It was hardly unusual but I just wanted him to stop and it was like I was in his mind suddenly and I knew I had control and… well I did some things I’m not very proud of,” he admits.

He made Cain live the torment he forced Charles to live through whenever they were left alone, forced him to feel what it was like when he used his element to deprive Charles of the very air he breathed, how it felt when he used air to compress his brain… It was something he never wanted to do again but in that moment it was like he was being compelled to do it and he couldn’t stop. He wasn’t sure how long it went on for but Cain left that night and Charles hasn’t seen hide nor hair of him since. Erik, when Charles finally confided in him years later, had scoffed at this because he felt Cain should have been able to put up with a taste of his own medicine. Charles still felt horrible about it. “So um, what triggered your abilities?” he asks to distract himself.

Tony shrugs, “I’ve always seen auras, never thought anything of it really. But I didn’t do much else until my dad um… well he turned Strigoi. Voluntarily in case that detail didn’t get to you. He came home for some reason, I don’t know why and I don’t care, but Rhodey- my best friend- he knew what he was right away. He attacked and Howard threw him aside like a rag doll not that it deterred Rhodey too much. He got back up but he was way too slow and Howard um… he snapped his neck. He was dead, I know he was but when I reached out it was like I grabbed ahold of his life force and brought it back to his body and I healed his broken neck too. Since then I’ve not really developed any new abilities, just the healing and auras and… This is going to sound weird but do you ever feel… I don’t know, insane?” he asks, frowning because that was woefully insufficient or that’s what Charles guesses.

“So you’ve noticed that too,” he murmurs, “I was hoping you hadn’t. Yes, I have had my moments but they usually show in mania. Sometimes though I get… angry I suppose and it’s difficult to control my actions then.” That had been what happened with Cain all those years ago. He didn’t like it at all but he also had no say in how his mind worked, it just went off and did things he would never approve of in his right mind.

This seems to bring some relief to Tony and Charles can’t tell if that’s good or bad. “That’s crappy but also kind of nice. I uh, well I have chronic insomnia and probably some addiction issues. The auras are less bright when you’re drunk or high,” he says.

Charles nods because he knew this well, “I used to be an addict too,” he whispers, “because it made the voices go away.” It had been Erik who pulled him out of it and it took work but they found ways to manage Charles’ bad days.

This puts a damper on the mood but Erik walks over to distract him, ever dutiful. “You can heal right? Can you heal insanity?” he asks. Charles knows what he’s asking for immediately and he looks up at Erik in shock. “It’s getting worse and you know it, if he can heal you you’ll be okay.”

“At the cost of his sanity, Erik,” Charles reminds him softly.

“His sanity isn’t my concern,” Erik states bluntly. Charles gives him a look but Erik is not a creature of guilt, he didn’t fall for Charles’ nonverbal guilt trip. They had an unconventional relationship even before it turned romantic. Usually guardians, if they were friends with the Moroi they guarded, acted something like confidants. Erik, however, took it upon himself to be far more than that to Charles as soon as he found out he was doing drugs. It was a two year battle of his and Erik’s wills but Erik had a far stronger will than his own and when you’re an addict the drugs way down on you eventually. Charles eventually gave in and Erik has taken care of him ever since though he’s usually saving Charles from his own mind.

“I um… I can, I think. But I’ve only just learned about it and I’m not sure what I’m doing there. Physical stuff, that’s easy because bones are simple. With mental illnesses though I just sort of look for dark spots in their aura and try and suck them out. It works but I’ve never tried it on well someone like us I guess. Does our magic even work on each other?” he asks.

Charles nods immediately, “it does, I can read your mind also. Just surface thoughts of course, I can’t help the wayward thoughts and I would never dig deep,” he assures Tony.

He nods, “well okay. I think we should research though, see if we can find something on our weird magic before we do something stupid,” Tony says.

“That,” Charles says, “is where you’re in luck. I have a lot of research on unaccounted magic and it is fascinating. I know I can do some of the things mentioned but you can do different things also, plus there are the things neither of us can do. How do you feel about meeting me here during your lunch hour?” he asks.

“I’d rather just skip first period- it’s my elemental class,” he says before Charles protests. “This would be more useful than that anyways.” Charles considers for a long moment before he eventually agrees.