Sentinel

Bucky probably hadn’t anticipated the help walking him back to his swanky guardian apartment but he really wasn’t in any condition to get there himself. He must have done some very impressive complaining at the clinic. Tony helps him though because someone had to make sure he didn’t keel over on the way home.

“Not gunna lie, this apartment is not what I expected,” Tony says as he deposits Bucky on his couch. By the time they had gotten here Tony had been next to carrying Bucky and he was not meant for that kind of activity. Moroi hardly did the heavy lifting when it came to literal heavy things. Political stuff was more their arena not that Tony really got much of a say in that anymore given his father’s actions. Asshole.

“And what’d you expect?” Bucky asks, offering a smile that Tony got the feeling people didn’t see often. He heard that Bucky used to be a real flirt but seeing him now it was hard to believe he’d been anything but a guardian.

“Something nice,” Tony says bluntly. Sure this place had some class- if they were renting it out as a no tell motel. “They do realize you guys die for us, right? Couldn’t they give you a place with some… I don’t know, swag?” he says for lack of a better term.

Bucky throws back his head and laughs but he looks like he regrets it immediately. “God, you Moroi are so damn clueless sometimes. This is fine with me, I don’t need much. Actually my training has taught me to survive on nothing but the land and I’ve done it too. I hated every second of it but I survived,” he says. “One of Peggy’s training exercises, one she only offers to those she likes because it looks nice on school records though technically anyone can go,” he explains when Tony raises an eyebrow.

“Poor Rhodey. I’d shoot myself if I were forced to live off the land.” He liked modernity and he was not wiping his ass with leaves but that was mostly because of a bad experience he had when he went camping as a child. How was he supposed to know that was poison ivy? And he didn’t appreciate Rhodey laughing so hard he damn near wet himself either. Of course he knew it was poison ivy and now Tony knew how.

“You wouldn’t have a gun,” Bucky says. “We were even instructed to come up with ways to kill Strigoi in that environment. That’s not fucking easy let me tell you.” Tony didn’t doubt that whatsoever though he had to wonder how the hell Dhampirs would even end up in that position.

Tony, maybe because he’s selfish, simply can’t imagine going through all this training for a race of people who by all means didn’t really appreciate it from his perspective. He’s heard people talk since the recent attacks and it almost always boiled down to two things. One- guardian incompetence, and two- not enough guardians. Then the solutions for these things were fucking insane, like forcing Dhampirs into service. Talk had started after the first attack but after this last one? Solutions were being put forth and people wanted action now.

“Don’t you ever get… I don’t know, annoyed by all of this? You’ve trained your whole life to protect Moroi and you don’t get much out of it. Guardian salaries suck, your jobs could be with an excellent family or it could be with some jackass who treats you like shit and you have to take it, and in the end it’s entirely possibly that you’ll die. Who wants a life like that?” Tony asks, shaking his head. Even Rhodey’s dedication to him baffled him.

Bucky considers Tony’s words for a long moment, “it’s what we’re trained to do. Be honest, would you prefer Rhodey not protect you?” he asks. He thinks he has Tony there, he can see the smugness on his face and his aura.

Instead of answering he considers his words. Would he prefer Rhodey’s attentions elsewhere? Would he really? His first instinct is to say no because Rhodey is his best friend and this was an easy way to keep them together but realistically he and Rhodey have always been two peas in a pod. He doubted Rhodey’s friendship would go elsewhere if he wasn’t risking his life for Tony. But would he appreciate Rhodey’s training and service the way it should be appreciated? He wasn’t so sure and not because he didn’t have a strong appreciation for all the time and effort Rhodey went through to try and protect him. He didn’t want that because… because…

Because the last time Rhodey stuck his life on the line for him he died. It was luck that gave Tony the power to bring him back and even then things have never been the same. Rhodey lost so much more than just his life that day and Tony has felt guilty for it ever since.

“Yeah,” Tony says, “I would. He deserves his own life.” The answer shocks the hell out of Bucky and Tony gets it. Dhampirs, they were taught from birth pretty much that it was their jobs to serve guardians. The only reason women even wiggled out of that was because they chose to raise their kids a lot of the time. It occurs to Tony then that they might be taking the only feasible out they had to dying for Moroi. Even then they got absolute hell for it given all the stereotypes about sleazy Dhampir women who were easy sex for Moroi men. They didn’t really escape anything, Tony realizes. Tough break.

“You actually believe that,” Bucky says, still shocked.

Tony shrugs, “of course I do. In what world is it fair to rob an entire race of people of their lives because you’re scared of what lurks in the dark? Don’t get me wrong I appreciate what you guys do but don’t you want your own lives?” he asks.

Bucky laughs though its more of a harsh sound, especially because it had to agitate his wounded stomach. “Our own lives never existed. If we run off we’re shamed and cut off from our communities, and if we chose to raise our children we’re shamed for that too. This is the only choice that gives us any sort of social mobility, you have to realize that.”

No, Tony didn’t realize that because he didn’t need to. He’s a Moroi. Hell, he never even considered what non-Royals like Pepper went through with that whole precarious guardian situation until he was in that situation himself. “That’s not fair,” he says.

“Nothing in life is fair, Tony. Besides, a lot of us genuinely want the job. Rhodey does,” Bucky points out.

“Rhodey and the rest of you have been conditioned to want the job. As someone from the outside here what you guys do is insane. No one wants your job; they take it out of necessity- you just admitted that yourself. Someone needs to fight but I don’t see why we aren’t the ones to do it given that it’s our lives we’re protecting. We’re sending someone else out to fight our battle and conditioning them to be alright with their own subjugation.” That… pissed him off actually. Rhodey would never get his own life even if he wasn’t assigned as Tony’s guardian- and there was a good chance he wouldn’t be Tony’s guardian. How fair was that? It’s hardly the first time Tony has acknowledged that this was not the kind of sacrifice he’d made for anyone. It was unfair to expect Rhodey to give up all the things Tony never would simply because he was arrogant enough to assume his life was more important.

“And what do you suppose Moroi do? Because you’ll all die without guardians,” Bucky points out.

“We’re dying with them too,” Tony shoots back. “You aren’t saving us, and we hardly put in any effort to save ourselves. Maybe we should.” Historically speaking Moroi used to do all sorts of cool stuff with their magic. Hell, humans used to hail them as gods because they used to stop natural disasters and all sorts of other stuff and now they didn’t do much with their magic at all. Aside from water the elements would be relatively useful in a fight against Strigoi and his experience with Howard and his mom lighting him on fire proved that. He felt like that could be useful in a fight.

“Tony, you can’t even throw a punch. What the hell do you think you’d do in a fight?” Bucky asks, looking flabbergasted.

“Don’t be absurd, I wouldn’t try and punch a Strigoi. If I used fire I’d just light the thing on fire. Or distract it by throwing rocks or something at it, air could knock the wind out of them. None of that would kill a Strigoi aside from the fire but it would buy a guardian more than enough time to get an opening to stake them. Plus Strigoi don’t expect you to fight back.” Howard clearly hadn’t expected resistance.

“But you don’t use fire Tony. You heal stuff and what are you going to do with that? Heal a Strigoi?” Bucky says in an obviously sarcastic tone but that was a thought. Bucky senses that he took it seriously and he shakes his head, “Jesus Christ Tony, you can’t bring people back to life let alone Strigoi.”

“Well actually…” he says, telling Bucky what actually happened with Rhodey. And making him promise to not tell Rhodey too. “I think that’s why the bond formed. What I’ve read on ‘shadow-kissed’ guardians seems to suggest that the Moroi they were bonded to saved them from death at some point. Beyond that I’m lost.”

Bucky just stares at him in shock and Tony supposes that makes sense. It wasn’t every day that you met a dude who could bring things back to life and he’s experienced Tony’s healing abilities, he knew he wasn’t lying about being good. “You… brought Rhodey back to life?” he asks.

He nods, “and I think it made his aura all dark and weird. It’s where ‘shadow-kissed’ comes from I think. Clearly the Moroi who made the term could also see auras. No idea what the shadows are though.” And they weren’t curable, which worried Tony. He’s tried a few times since the first to heal Rhodey’s shadows and they never went anywhere. Sometimes Tony would notice a couple of spots went away and Rhodey was always in a better mood after those spots were healed out but Tony didn’t know what those were either. Rhodey didn’t have any of that mental instability Tony usually associated with black spots.

“Death,” Bucky says. “You brought Rhodey back to life, you can’t just die and come back without that leaving a mark.”

You’re marked with death, I can see it. Tony remembers Bucky’s telling him about his weird word salad to him and he hadn’t got it but it clicks now. “Have you… had any close calls?” he asks.

“I’m a guardian, it’s in the job description,” Bucky says. He clearly isn’t taking the question seriously and Tony huffs in annoyance.

“No, I mean have you been close to death or resuscitated or something?” he asks.

Bucky frowns but nods, “when I lost my arm, why?”

“Because I finally know what I meant when I told you you were marked by death. I don’t see it on you often, hardly ever really, but if I think hard enough I remember seeing shadows in your aura like Rhodey’s. I just didn’t make the connection because Rhodey’s shadows take up far more of his aura than the occasional shadows in yours.” The only other time he’s seen shadows like that, not that he thinks about it, is in Erik’s aura. There were a lot of dark spots there that indicated that he was just this side of sane but there were other shadows in there too, ones that moved like Rhodey’s. Like he’s been killed and brought back a few times even if that made no sense. He would have had to have had that happen a hell of a lot if those shadows took up as much of his aura as it did and Tony wasn’t about to get cozy with the dude to find out what happened there.

“Jesus this is weird. Ever occurred to you that you should tell someone about this?” he asks. The poor guy looks shocked and confused.

“Yeah, but Rhodey told me not to. He’s probably worried that someone’ll run experiments on me or something.” To be fair he probably wasn’t wrong.

*

Tony spends far more time at Bucky’s than he anticipated but it was worth it to hear his stories about when he was in school. “Peggy must have threated to skin me at least twice a week,” Bucky says, shaking his head. “That woman has the patience of a saint when she feels like it.”

“When she feels like it being the important bit of that.” Tony knew that Peggy had no patience when she didn’t feel like it too. She was a terrifying woman when people got on her nerves and back when Howard was still around Tony had always been enthused when Peggy told him off. Not many Dhampirs would have the balls to tell a very powerful Moroi to fuck himself sideways, especially not a Dhampir woman, but Peggy was a badass. Secretly she had always been his childhood hero and Rhodey’s too. They used to glean information regarding her legendary status off of other guardians and Maria all the time. If Peggy noticed she never said anything about it but it wasn’t like her to accept being treated like a celebrity.

“Did I ever tell you about the pot brownie incident?” Bucky asks, looking down at Tony and grinning. He’s laying across the couch with his head in Bucky’s lap and it was… comfortable. It certainly wasn’t as odd as he thought it would have been given the ‘forbidden fruit’ status Bucky has given their relationship.

Tony grins, “no you haven’t. You’ve eaten edibles? They will fuck you up.” He had his own tales about eating some things he maybe shouldn’t have. Rhodey has damn near beat his ass for eating things he had no business eating a few times. One time Pepper actually did smack him, probably hoping some sense would come but all it did was piss him off. Maybe that’s why Rhodey has never followed through on his threats to literally smack some sense into Tony and in Pepper’s defense she felt terrible about it and apologized. Tony accepted it because he purposefully gave her the wrong information for a math test they had and she bombed it, which was a big deal for her.

“So I know. My friends and I, we used to call ourselves the Howling Commandos because we thought it was cool, decided to get wasted one night. It wasn’t abnormal but this time Mortia brought something else to the party and I was a reckless idiot at that point in my life. Mortia warned me but I ate a little and didn’t feel anything so I ate a little more. Nothing happened to I ate the whole thing and I saw the face of god,” he says and Tony cracks up.

Oh man, someone should have taken the brownie from Bucky before that happened. “Stop laughing, I went to church for months before I renounced religion because sinning was more fun that being devout,” he says, flicking Tony. This only makes him laugh harder because Bucky Barnes as a devout Christian was hilarious.

“Once, when Rhodey and I were in the height of our party days, I found this plate of brownies-”

“Oh no,” Bucky says, interrupting and looking worried even though Tony clearly survived the incident.

“Oh yeah. I ate like seven before Pepper found me and flipped out because she happened to know they weren’t the average brownie. That night I saw Satan’s asshole and decided Christianity wasn’t for me.” That wasn’t totally true, he’d been an atheist before that, but damn that night he had been convinced if there was a god he was intent on smiting Tony in particular.

Bucky manages a quick laugh before his stomach prevents further giggles. Tony was tempted to heal him more but Bucky waves him off, sensing his line of thinking. “You ate seven brownies and survived?” he asks.

“Pretty sure I went into a coma because I woke up in the hospital with no knowledge of how I got there but yeah, I lived.” Rhodey had cut him off from eating at parties until he vetted the food after that and it was honestly for the best.

“God, and I thought Peggy finding out about my pot brownie experience was bad. She found out and went and woke me up early the next day and made me run suicides so hard I thought she genuinely wanted me to die out there. She told me never to do something so stupid again and I listened.” Bucky grimaces, probably remembering those suicides and honestly Tony would too. The only times he ever ran was in in gym class as a kid and he did everything in his power to get out of those classes. Including breaking his ankle one time mostly on purpose. Rhodey had been pissed but Tony only meant to sprain it, how was he supposed to know he’d land on it so funny?

“One time I was bothering Rhodey in one of his classes because his class was next to mine and Peggy threated to make me run suicides to I went to Italy for a week,” Tony says.

Bucky looks down at him to see if he was serious and he shakes his head when he determines that he is. “You went to Italy for a week to escape Peggy’s wrath?” he asks and Tony nods, “wise choice. Once when I was a young little brat I thought Peggy’s reputation was mostly made up so I told her to fuck off and Steve smuggling me out of school to Romania probably saved my life. She still gave me detention for a month before and after class but in the end the extra training had been worth it. And I never said anything even remotely negative to her after that.”

“Howard, back when he was alive, was a total asshole,” Tony says slowly and Bucky looks surprised. Tony didn’t mention him when he was alive much if ever so he supposed it was warranted. “No one liked telling him where to stick his own ego but this one time he made the mistake of calling Peggy a blood whore and she straight up punched him in the face. Laid him flat on his ass and told him he could go to the guardians and tell them a blood whore beat him up. He never tested her again.”

Tony, on the inside, had been screaming in triumph because that was still his single greatest memory of Howard he had but on the outside he just looked shocked. He and Rhodey talked about that for months because it was just that badass. Howard took a long time to heal from it too. He always suspected Peggy knew about the abuse too but she mostly kept her suspicions to herself, but that day she apparently had enough of Howard’s shit. Actually, now that Tony thought about it Howard and his mom had gotten in a nasty fight the night before and… well maybe she didn’t punch Howard just because he insulted her. But it was a good cover and Howard told everyone he fell.

Bucky’s eyebrows shot up, “your father seriously called Peggy a blood whore?” The look on his face suggested that he thought that was certain suicide and he wasn’t wrong. Howard’s ego was thoroughly murdered that day.

“Yup. And he got decked for his efforts. I sent her flowers anonymously.” They were nice too, and they didn’t smell like ass. Rhodey had helped pick them out because he knew how Dhampir noses worked. Tony’s nose was more sensitive than Dhampir noses but different things smelled more pleasant to Dhampirs than Moroi.

“You sent Peggy flowers for punching your dad in the face? Yikes,” Bucky says, wincing.

Tony shrugs, “Howard was a piece of shit. I wish Peggy had’ve staked him before he went Strigoi.” It surprises him, and Bucky, how much he means that. But the man was a nasty piece of work and the day he died was easily the best day of his life. It was also the worst day of his life but that was because of Rhodey dying and everything that happened after, not because Howard died.

“My father was an asshole too,” Bucky says softly. “Bit of a drinker. Didn’t like it much when I knocked him out when he decided it was a good idea to hit my mom. Didn’t help that I was fifteen. I think that bruised his massive ego.”

“Damn, you punched your dad out? My hero. If I could throw a punch I probably would have tried but I stuck to my strengths and purposefully opposed every single opinion my dad ever had and made sure the whole damn Court knew.” Back when he and Maria were still involved in Court life anyways, now they’ve been dropped like a bad habit yet again thanks to Howard’s shitty life choices. It was always him that screwed everything up.

“Best reaction you got out of Howard, go.” Bucky says, grinning down at Tony.

“The one time I suggested he should be removed from his position as the Stark prince due to moral impropriety and cited his mistress on the west coast as the proof. Got my ass beat for it but it was so worth it to see the shock on everyone’s faces when I had real proof.” Howard had been livid but not as livid as Maria, who damn near threw him out of the house.

Bucky’s eyebrows shoot back up, “oh damn, that’s hilarious! There’s no way that didn’t leave a huge mark on his social interactions. Man, that is way better than just punching the guy given how that would follow him around. His own kid renouncing his Royal position because he thought he was morally indecent. You’re savage.”

Tony grins, “so I’ve been told. There was a reason why I sat on the top of the social pyramid when I chose to be there. I’m good at reading people and gathering information, people didn’t like messing with me only to have all their dirty laundry aired to all.” He’s grateful that Bucky doesn’t mention that bit where Tony out and out admitted his father was abusive though. It used to bother him when he’d make casual reference to it and no one would react aside from Rhodey, who was probably plotting Howard’s murder, but now he was grateful for it. Howard left enough of a mark on his life; he didn’t need more concern over him.

Bucky shakes his head in wonder; “man Steve would have loved you for that. He was never fond of the way people got away with things if they could pay people enough to keep their mouths shut. You two would probably take down the Moroi government together if you got bored on a rainy day.” Tony takes the compliment as high praise because Bucky didn’t mention Steve much and being compared to him had to be a good thing with how close they were. Steve sounded like a pretty cool guy anyways.