Sentinel

Charles and Tony talk until the school day’s dawn and Charles offers to talk to someone to see if Tony could have the day off but he waves him off. He was used to functioning on low amounts of sleep and he’d never get to bed when he was so worried about Bucky and to a lesser extent the rest of the guardians checking out those Strigoi. They went during the day, which was easily an advantage, but that didn’t necessarily mean they would come back unharmed. Humans probably wouldn’t be able to do much damage but Tony knew a thing or two about well-trained humans- Peggy’s rumored girlfriend was one of them- and he figured they could cause enough damage to hurt. He met Natasha once for a few minutes and she looked terrifying.

He and Charles are talking about their research on strange magic when they both catch the flurry of action as the guardians return. “Oh,” Charles says, frowning, “they have injured guardians. That’s- Tony, where are you going!” he asks as Tony immediately starts off towards the infirmary. He can feel more than see Charles following, and presumably Erik too, thanks to getting a feel on how to sense their magic. They figured they could do more than just see the magic on each other- Charles was right in saying Tony has never seen a golden aura before and he couldn’t see his own so he didn’t know. Charles said he’d teach Tony how to see his own aura and then they worked on trying to focus on each other, wondering if they could read a magical signature of sorts given the empathetic nature of their powers.

They had figured it out and now Tony could feel Charles’ magic even if he wasn’t focusing on it. He wonders briefly if Charles was counting on sensing Tony’s mind of his magic given that he typically focused on minds. He brushes the thoughts aside as he approaches the infirmary though because he needed to know who got hurt. He’s about to walk though the door where the commotion was when he feels a hand pull him back. The force was far stronger than anything Charles could have managed, which meant it was Erik. Tony turns to tell him off but Charles quickly shushes him and turns his focus on the people passing by, two fingers to his temple.

For a good thirty seconds Tony had no damn clue what Charles was doing until he notices that no one was noticing them standing there. “Are you… hiding us somehow?” Tony asks after a few more seconds of observation.

“Yes,” Charles says through gritted teeth, “all they see is the wall behind us.”

Tony’s eyebrows shoot up, “okay, that’s cool. You didn’t say you could do that,” he says.

“Part of the mind reading and compulsion,” Charles explains. Erik doesn’t look at all impressed with this but he stands there for several more moments before he gestures to a door down the hall. Charles nods, apparently having read Erik’s plan out of his mind and completely forgetting that Tony couldn’t do that before they set off. Erik seems to remember his inability to read minds though because he reaches out and snatches Tony’s arm, dragging him along when he notices that Tony hadn’t started moving with them.

“He can’t keep that up for too long,” Erik explains when he all but tosses Tony into the small room down the hall.

“Oh, what is that?” Charles asks, eyes widening.

“What’s what?” Tony asks, frowning.

Charles’ eyebrows shoot up, “oh, you can’t feel that? I… I think someone is… attached or something to your mind. It feels like they’re on the cusp of being in your mind,” he says.

Tony swears, “damnit, that’s Rhodey. The best friend I brought back to life,” he explains. “We have a bond and sometimes if my emotions are running high he slips into my head accidentally.” Now was absolutely not the time for this kind of thing to happen to him but he guessed he could make excuses like he had to Pepper to Rhodey…

“I can push him back out if you’d like, he doesn’t seem impressed that you’ve woken him up,” Charles says. Tony considers it for a moment, weighing the pros and cons before he nods for Charles to go ahead. The weird thing is that Tony can feel Charles in his head, but not Rhodey. Maybe it was because the bond made Rhodey’s presence noninvasive or something. He didn’t know, but he knew immediately when Charles was in his head because he felt foreign, like an oppressive force in there rooting around in a mind that wasn’t his.

“Oh,” Charles says, “my god your mind is fascinating. There we go, out you go Rhodey.” Tony can feel Rhodey for a brief second before Charles pushes him out and then the two-way connection is broken. Tony gets a brief spike in worry that he knows isn’t his own and he sighs.

“Can you like… mute the bond or something? Rhodey’s probably going to try hunting me down and I need a few minutes,” he says. Charles and Erik exchange a look but Charles shrugs.

“I suppose I can see if I can hold the bond at bay for a few moments but your mind is very um… aware of my presence. Most minds feel a prickle of something in their heads but it’s little more than paranoia that someone else can see their thoughts. You out and out knew I was there and how to locate my presence specifically. That was very odd in my experience,” Charles says, frowning at Tony’s forehead like he could get something out of it if he stared at it long enough.

Tony nods, getting what Charles meant when he feels his presence in Tony’s head again and he opens the door, intent of seeing who got hurt quickly before he left the infirmary. He runs into someone immediately but it doesn’t take him long to hold eye contact, “we have permission to be here. Don’t worry about us,” he says, pushing his will outward through his voice and the nurse looks briefly confused before he wanders off and Tony presses forward.

“That was… you’re good at that,” Charles says.

“You’re better,” Erik mumbles behind them. Tony got the feeling Erik didn’t like him much.

“That’s because I can control minds, Erik. He did that without any sort of telepathy,” Charles says, sounding impressed. Tony ignores their bickering to look around the room. There weren’t many people in it so it seemed like only a few guardians got hurt but his heart still skips a beat or three when he spots Bucky lying on an examination table looking pale. He can see a few cuts and bruises and his aura indicates that he isn’t conscious. Shit.

He quickly walks over and contemplates his options before he figures fuck it, why bother holding back? So he takes a deep breath and reaches out to his magic, touching that warm, tingling feeling that he got when he healed people and he pushes it outwards towards Bucky. Behind him he can hear Charles gasp in surprise and at his fingertips he can see color returning to Bucky’s face as the cuts, bruises, and various other wounds disappear. Tony pulls back, leaving a few of the harsher wounds so it didn’t look like he was brought in for nothing even though he doesn’t want to. He hardly expects Bucky to wake up, looking confused and surprisingly alert.

“Hey, shh, you’re at the Academy,” Tony tells him, gently pressing him back onto the table. He goes easily enough even though he could easily rival Tony for strength even hurt.

“Oh. When did I get back here?” he asks, frowning and looking around.

“Not long ago, maybe a half hour or so. I have to go though, alright? Class and all that,” he says, smiling wearily. Bucky blinks a few more times, obviously still a little thrown off but he nods and Tony goes, looking back for just a moment at Bucky before he turns the corner and leaves the building.

*

As expected Rhodey loses it when he finds Tony in the cafeteria, dragging him and his bagel out of the room and into the hallway. “What the fuck happened this morning?” he hisses.

“Look, it was nothing, I’ll-” Tony would have continued but Rhodey cuts him off.

“Nothing, nothing? I was pushed out of your head and then I couldn’t see or feel you for like ten minutes! I almost alerted the guardians because I thought you were dead!” Rhodey snaps, voice rising as he continues.

“I met someone else like me,” Tony says quickly before Rhodey could continue. “Someone who didn’t specialize but has… abilities. Not the same as mine but that was him, it’s fine Rhodey. I’m okay, we were just testing our magic,” he lies easily. It wasn’t technically a lie, they were testing Charles’ magic and Tony’s given that they had no idea how or if any of that even would have worked.

Rhodey considers this for a long moment before he relaxes some, “Tony, you can’t do shit like that without warning me first. Do you even know this guy? Because if this is another Loki type thing-” he starts and Tony waves him off.

“Charles and Loki are nothing alike, and you have no reason to dislike Loki. I… we… look he’s been dong research for a long time on his special brand of magic and we can both feel that we’re accessing the same kind of magic. Plus he knows about the um… other things too, the affects.”

“Tony!” Rhodey hisses at him, throwing his hands up. “Stop telling people about all your problems! Someone is bound to use it against you!”

“He has the same problems, Rhodey. Well not the exact same, but we both have mental instabilities and we’ve both used substances to numb the magic. This is important Rhodey, we both know things about our magic that the other doesn’t. I’m not some kind of freak!” he says and he can feel his excitement build for the first time since finding Charles. Now that he knew Bucky was okay this was all sorts of awesome. Tony has been feeling some pretty nasty side affects to his magic and given that Charles had them too he wasn’t just crazy, he had a reason for being crazy. It was his magic; it was doing something to him and to Charles but neither one of them knew why.

But with each other they could figure out each other’s abilities, learn how to use them and how to avoid going nuts. Hell, maybe they’d even be able to learn what kind of element they were controlling. Obviously they had some connection to one of the four but Tony wasn’t sure which one it was and he was less sure why regular users of this element didn’t have the powers they did. Earth had theoretical life-giving abilities, and air was often associated with the mind, but no element was attached to auras. Besides that Tony has felt Pepper use earth, this wasn’t that. And why did he and Charles have golden auras when no one else seemed to? What did that mean? Well he knew what it meant- that they worked the same kind of magic- but they didn’t know why only they had the auras versus everyone attached to the element they were using.

“Whoa, hey, hey. Slow down, I know you’ve got a million questions just… be careful,” Rhodey says, ever he cautious one.

Tony smiles but he laughs, “you sound like Charles’ guardian. He wasn’t impressed when Charles started talking about all the things he could do before he even technically knew I could do weird things too,” he says, thinking of how annoyed Erik had looked and how excited Charles had looked. The image must be strong for Rhodey too because he laughs and throws an arm around Tony, pulling him back into the cafeteria so they could eat. He does tell Tony to watch his back at least fifty times over the course of the meal though. So much so that Pepper had to eventually ask what Loki did only to find out about Charles instead.

*

The magic always had consequences but Tony didn’t usually feel them so fast after using it. This time, he supposed, might be different because he was used to numbing the power with some kind of pill or booze and he hasn’t been doing that lately, plus he used a lot of the element today. Either way the auras were giving him headaches because they were so bright and he was tired but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep.

“Are you alright?” Loki murmurs, gently kneeling down beside him. They’re in the library researching some earth magic both Loki and Pepper were curious about but he must not be pulling his weight if Loki had noticed he was off.

“I’m okay, I just have a headache,” he says softly.

Loki looks sympathetic and to Tony’s surprise he stands and starts closing to books to put them away. “You don’t need to do that,” Tony says quickly, not wanting Loki to stop any sort of research on his account.

“Shh,” Loki says gently, “it’s alright. Just relax and we’ll go back to the dorm in a moment, alright?”

Tony’s head hurt too much to argue much about it so he remains silent as Loki moves around packing his things. It feels like longer than it probably was but Loki comes back to him and gently helps him out of his chair. He lets Tony lean on him too, wrapping his arm around Tony’s waist as he leads him off to the Moroi dorm.

He should have anticipated Rhodey showing up given that he could feel Tony’s pain like it was his own but he doesn’t until Rhodey is right there, gently talking to him. Tony goes to respond, thankful that it was still dark outside, but Loki catches his attention. “I’ve got him, alright? You can go back to your dorm, I’ll make sure he gets to bed alright,” Loki tells him.

Rhodey looks ready to argue because he doesn’t like Loki but Loki reiterates the words and Rhodey nods, gently telling Tony to sleep well before he goes. Tony nods weakly and lets Loki all but drag him across campus. He lets Loki lead the way to his room and gratefully flops on the bed when he gets there. “Do you need anything?” he asks softly, bending down to Tony’s level again.

“Yeah, a fucking drink or five,” Tony mumbles. He’s been getting cravings, of course he has, but they were mostly out of his mind with how busy he was lately with worrying about attacks, Loki’s attentions to him, Pepper talking about her new progress with her element, Bucky, and Charles. But now he just wanted to drown in a bottle of whisky because his damn head was killing him and that would help.

The last thing Tony expects is for Loki to actually give him alcohol, not that he notices at first. He just presses the bottle into Tony’s hands and he sits up some, taking a drink of the liquid only to realize it was alcohol too late. By then his body sort of takes over and he tips it back and drinks more.

“Hey slow down,” Loki says, gently pulling at Tony’s arm. “I have no idea how you can stomach that.” Loki wrinkles his nose and his aura shows a touch of disgust though Tony is pretty sure it’s directed towards the alcohol.

“You don’t have my headache,” he mumbles and drinks some more. It takes a few minutes but he eventually notices the way Loki’s aura was starting to fade thank god.

*

Rhodey walks off to his own dorm like nothing was wrong despite the niggling feeling in the back of his head that Tony needed him. He waves it off though because he was sure it was nothing and he had a lot of homework he needed to get done. Plus he was planning on asking Peggy about that guardian raid because she might just feel generous enough to give him a few details.

His classmates obviously assume the same thing because they all swarm him as soon as he enters the dorm, peppering him with questions that he didn’t have the answers to yet. “Shit guys, can’t you give me ten seconds to actually ask Peggy? I have my own things to do you know,” he points out.

“Well hurry up and get us some answers Rhodes, do your dues,” one of his classmates jokes and he rolls his eyes fondly.

“Yeah, yeah. Give me a half an hour and I’ll see what I can do,” he tells them all and he heads off to ask Peggy a few questions. It isn’t until he’s almost at the guardian building that he realizes why he felt so uncomfortable leaving Tony earlier.

He hates Loki and he doesn’t trust him as far as Tony could throw him. And Tony probably couldn’t even pick him up. So why the hell did he just leave Tony there with him almost no questions asked?

The answer is easy when he thinks back on it, focusing past that urge to go back to his dorm. He’s seen Tony work compulsion a million times, especially after Howard, but it never really occurred to him that other Moroi could wield it too, mostly because other Moroi almost never used that particular brand of magic. To them it was immoral but this was Loki, Rhodey doubted he had the same reservations that the rest of Moroi society did but it did surprise him that he could use compulsion on a dhampir. That was difficult for even the most talented Moroi when it came to compulsion. The only exception was Tony, but he was also a novice. Youth made minds easier to manipulate and Rhodey was pissed that he was susceptible.

As soon as he realized what happened, though, he takes off to find Tony. Something was going on here and he wasn’t going to abandon his best friend when he obviously needed Rhodey.