Legal Disclaimer: I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.
Warning: This work may be offensive to some readers. Additionally, there is referenced character deaths (unnamed Hydra agents) and strongly implied child abuse (the Dursleys & the Red Room, mostly) with lingering influences. Feel free to back out if need be.
Author's Note: It's not really a triggery thing but as fair warning, this fic has mild spoilers for both Avengers: Endgame and Loki. You don't have to have seen either to really understand what is going on, because everything necessary to understand is explained in the fic and anything else doesn't impact the plot of this particular fic. Something that does impact this fic is how it is taking place in the same 'verse as The Witness, so it might make more sense if you have already read that fic.
AU Trope Specifics (Quick & Dirty): Sentinels have enhanced physical senses & physical abilities (strength/dexterity kind of thing). Guides have enhanced metaphysical senses like empathy & telepathy. Sensitive is a collective term for both Sentinels & Guides, with Sensitivity being a collective term for both sets of enhancements. Most Sensitives do not have their abilities become active until adulthood, unless something traumatic forces the activation as a survival instinct. Sensitives are territorially protective over what they view as their Tribe, which often leads them to drift naturally into social groups similar to wolves or large cats. A pack is a family group including at least one Sensitive. Blessed Protector is when a Sensitive (most commonly a Sentinel) goes deep into their instincts where all they can focus on is protecting someone/something.
Submitting Info:
Stacked with: Hogwarts (Term 14); MC4A (Year 4)
Individual Challenges: Best Stories (Y); La Vie Boheme; Not the Mama; Fix-It Felix (Y); My Favorite Things; Magical MC (Y); Metahuman MC (x2); SHIELD MC (x2); Marvelous HP; Military MC (x2); Neurodivergent (x2); Rian-Russo Inversion (x2); Ethnic & Present; Disabled; Tiny Terror; Booger Breath; Claimed; Ship Sails; Setting Sail; Gwen's MCU Bribery (Y); Hold the Mayo; Gender Bender; Go Fluff Yourself; Colors Galore; Zed Era; Old Shoes (Y); Old Shoes; Marvelous Cinema; Sentinel; Long Haul; The Story Goes On; Two Cakes (Y); Eating Cake (Y); Green Ribbon (Y)
House: Slytherin
Assignment No.: Term 14 – Assignment 12
Subject (Task No.): Photography (Task#10: Write about someone who likes to draw.)
Other Hogwarts Challenges: Fantastic Beasts [36](Guarding Something); 365 Prompts [250](Superhero AU); Scavenger Hunt [27](Parent & Child)
Other MC4A Challenges: SpB [4A](Pebbles); TrB [2A](Bodyguard Crush); SuB [2B](Cave/Cavern); AU [3E](Sentinel/Guide); Ship (Winter Iron)[SpBig](Blanket)/[SpBig](Fruit/Berries)/[SpBig](Jewelry) /[SpMic1](Sentinel/Guide)/[SuMic2](Purple)/[Bingo](5C - Trapped Together); Chim [Xylit](Protection; Royal Purple; Gender Bend); Hunt [Su Set](On a Plane)/[Su Con](Seeds/Nuts)/[Su Items](Hat)/[Su Items](Swimsuit)/[Su Set](At Night); Garden [Tools](Blanket)/[Tools](Boots)/[Tools](Jewelry); Fire [Hard](Family Matters)/[Med](Hands on Deck)/[Easy](Touch Feast)
Representation(s): Desi & Fem Harry Potter; Guide Harry Potter; Winter Soldier Raises Harry Potter; Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers QPR; Pre-Ship Bucky Barnes/Tony Stark
Primary & Secondary Bonus Challenges: Brooms Only; A Long Dog; Eternal Boredom; Larger than Life; Unicorn; Second Verse (Ladylike; Not a Lamp; Persistence Still; Found Family; Nontraditional; Zucchini Bread; Middle Name; Nightingale; Spinning Plates; Unwanted Advice); Chorus (Odd Feathers; Pocky Pockets; Wabi Sabi; Machismo; Rediscovery; Mouth of Babes; Tomorrow's Shade)
Tertiary & Generic Bonus Challenges: T3 (Tether); SN (Rail; Spare); FR (Gestation; Satisfaction); War (Orator; Sanctuary)
Word Count: 3103 words
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The Protector
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The Avengers hadn't gone there looking for Bucky. They were searching, at least nominally, for Loki and the Tesseract he had stolen when he had escaped, following the unique radiation burst that had first been detected at the last place that the Tesseract's radiation had been. In the months since the Incident (as the attempted invasion was more colloquially known), the signature had pinged enough that all of them had begun to worry that something else might be happening than Loki teleporting willy-nilly. They weren't even actively hunting Hydra or the group known as AIM, which was short for Advanced Idea Mechanics. It was just that a good deal of the locations where the radiation burst occurred happened to be bases or labs for the two groups.
The point was that the Avengers did not go to this particular base looking for Bucky, who may or may not actually be alive as the other Steve had claimed. In fact, they hadn't expected there to be any captives at the Hydra base they had raided after there had been a burst of strange energy from the location. None of the (admittedly limited) intel for the mission had suggested there might be prisoners of any sort. Not to say that they hadn't run across captives before because as previously mentioned, a lot of the bursts they were following tended to also be Hydra strongholds, and human experimentation was just as common in modern branches of Hydra as it had been back during the War. Some of those captives had been in pretty bad shape, too, because human experimentation was always stressful even if the people being experimented upon had volunteered.
But before, the potential presence of non-Hydra people had always been confirmed.
So when Natasha announced the presence of at least one person in the sublevel she had just entered, it was a bit of shock. Then what she said next made their blood run cold.
"Stark, Code BP," she said professionally and nowhere near as panicked as the phrase indicated that she should be. Natasha wasn't a guide or a sentinel, even if she had been trained how to mimic both kinds of Sensitives enough that she could help or hinder their senses. Unfortunately, the side effect of that training made her a bystander at greater risk when it came to Sensitives in Blessed Protector mode.
Steve didn't need the sudden silence of chatter on the line to know that Tony had switched to a private channel to get as much information from Natasha as he rushed towards her location. He just wished that they had stayed on the main channel, no matter how distracting that might have been. He could already feel himself slipping towards the edge of feral at the heightened risk to his packmates. Fighting enemies already drove up his sentinel instincts; knowing that there was another sentinel nearby who might be an enemy just made it all that much worse.
He forcefully pushed the information away and concentrated on the task at hand.
Only a long while later, when the Hydra agents had been subdued and rounded up, did Steve realize that neither Natasha nor Tony had checked in yet. The battle had lasted long enough that the late afternoon had seeped into twilight around them. Stars were starting to appear in the darkening sky overhead. He was just about to set off in a run towards the basement when the comms crackled back to life.
"Oh, Captain, my Captain," Tony announced and if he hadn't been so relieved, Steve would have rolled his eyes at the silliness of it, "be a dear and bring Brucie-bear's backup blanket to the sublevel along with a handful of the broth bags. Don't bring any guests."
Bruce and Clint had most of the requested items gathered up by the time Steve reached the Avengers' quinjet. Even dead on his feet from the hours transformed into the Hulk, Bruce was fussing over the canvas bag containing the rolled blanket and several self-heating bags of high-calorie broth. When half the team had high metabolisms, a variety of food stuffs became standard supplies. The broth bags were mostly for Bruce who often had an upset stomach after a transformation. The packets of almonds that Bruce was piling atop of the broth were Bruce's as well.
"Tony probably has dried fruit of some sort," Bruce muttered, more like he was thinking out loud than expecting a reply. He tended to do that when he was having a hard time concentrating. At least he never seemed to lose track of when he was saying things opposed to only thinking it. That seemed to be a uniquely Tony issue, thank God. Bruce looked around the quinjet as if checking that he hadn't forgotten anything. "First aid kit? No. Tony didn't say if there was any medical issues and JARVIS would have scanned the targets first thing. I think you're ready to go."
"Not quite," Clint interrupted, popping out of some cubbyhole that Tony had designed into the plane, probably for that exact purpose. The genius had a habit doing things like that, after all. Clint plunked a weird necklace thing made of many different kinds of royal purple beads into the bag. There were enough shapes and textures on the beads that Steve knew it had to be one of the sensory tools that Tony had been trying to get Steve to try.
"Thanks," Steve said evenly. He was antsy to get down below. Tony had to have a reason to request him specifically, and to request that he come alone. If Tony hadn't gotten the sentinel out of BP mode, then bringing in another sentinel would just escalate everything. If Tony had gotten the sentinel out of BP mode, then why weren't they on their way up already? Not to mention that Nat hadn't come back up either, which was its own kind of bad.
Steve didn't realize until he was halfway down the last set of stairs that the sublevel was not manmade. Instead it opened into a medium-sized cavern complete with columns of stone that glistened in the carefully placed emergency lights. A number of smooth pebbles covered the floor of the cavern. It made getting to where he saw Tony and Natasha standing a bit difficult as they kept shifting beneath his boots.
He had only made it halfway when a loud growl echoed throughout the room. He hesitated for a second before continuing towards his pack mates. The hairs on the back of his neck raised as Steve caught the outermost edge of a heavy defensive aura. Only then did Steve process that the growl hadn't sounded like something a sentinel would make.
Guide.
Steve felt his gut clench in true fear. Sentinels were the more aggressive of the Sensitive types. Or at least that was what most of society thought. It even had the benefit of being mostly true. Sentinels had more of the instinctive drive to establish and maintain territories. It meant that they also tended to clash with each other more, unless they had established a hierarchy in some other way.
Guides established hierarchies and territories in different ways, ones which were nearly invisible to anyone who was not also a guide. Being empathic, guides tended to avoid violence or anything that caused suffering. Their ways weren't necessarily kinder or less ruthless. They were just different.
And nothing drove a sentinel's protective instincts into overdrive quite like a guide in need of help. Not because guides were more vulnerable—no one who had seen a guide in action would ever say that they couldn't handle themselves—but there was still the instinct there to protect guides above all other adult members of one's tribe. It was just a thing.
On the flip side of the coin was that if a guide was pushed into a protective or territorial act, they were more decisive. They avoided suffering, after all, not violence… not death.
Steve carefully did not do more than glance at the fallen bodies around cavern. He didn't need to extend his hearing to know that they were dead. All of them wore the insignia of Hydra on their uniforms. Natasha was standing away from Iron Man with her hands in the air and giving her best impression of a statue. Steve's heart stuttered a bit when he realized that Tony had stepped out of the armor, not that it offered much protection against what a guide could bring to bear. The genius was crouched down halfway between the armor and what had to be the guide who was still in BP. Tony was holding out a Mylar baggie of—Steve breathed in deeply to verify rather than making an assumption—dried blueberries. Bruce certainly did know his fellow guide well.
The guide was a small girl in a one-piece swimsuit that was a dark purple with orange seahorses on it. She had dark tan skin that had more than a few white and pink scars interrupting like beacons. Her hair color was difficult to discern due to the old-fashioned sunhat she wore, the same kind that Bucky's mother used to wear whenever she was working in their rooftop garden. From beneath the wide brim of the hat, the girl glared out with green eyes that seemed to glow in the dim light of the cavern.
She was crouched over an unconscious man who was also wearing beachwear. His face was hidden from them by the angle and the way the girl was crouched, but Steve didn't need to see the man's face. The board shorts he was wearing had ridden up a bit to reveal the skin of his thigh right above the knee. Just as clear as the day that they had (in their shared infinite wisdom of thirteen-year-olds) done it, there was a small back alley tattoo of simplistic wolf with its head thrown back in a howl.
Either it was a very large coincidence of the kind that proved how cruel the universe could be or the man laying on the ground was none other than Bucky Barnes, just as alive as the fake-Steve-who-was-probably-Loki had claimed. His best friend since childhood, the man that Steven had done his sentinel training with and then had fought beside during the war, was actually alive and right in front of him.
That was when it truly dawned on Steve just how dangerous the situation was.
Sentinels were extremely protective of guides, yes, but the reverse was also true. Sensitives rarely awakened before late adolescence but those who awakened earlier than that tended to have protective instincts that were stronger than the norm, which meant that they tended to fall into feral episodes and Blessed Protector mode more easily even after reaching adulthood. Children were also tended to not have a great deal of fine control over the combative abilities that came along with their particular kind of Sensitivity.
Whoever that little girl was to Bucky, she was definitely guarding him. Whoever she was, she was also a fully awakened guide who was also in Blessed Protector mode. However old she was (because Steve didn't think that she was as young as her size would normally indicate but if she was much older, Steve might lose his already tentative hold over his own instincts), she had just killed at least a dozen Hydra soldiers. She didn't even look phased by that fact either.
Something continued to nag at Steve as Bucky began to shift slightly beneath the girl. Something was off and it scratched at him like ants crawling over his skin or how he felt when out in the sun long enough for the serum to be constantly healing a growing sunburn. Steve took another deep breath, hoping to calm himself with the scent of his teammates.
Then he blinked and did it again.
Natasha smelled slightly sweaty with a fading trace of the citrus tea she liked to drink to wake up. Tony smelled strongly of coffee, metallic coconut, and the blueberries that he loved to snack on. The cavern around them was musty and moist with just a hint of leather from the new corpses strewn about. Bucky was achingly familiar even after so long without him, still coolly refreshing like the rain in late winter, under the briny scent of a seaside beach.
But there was nothing to indicate that the girl even existed.
"Hey, Cap, you need to breathe," Tony ordered without turning towards him. "The last thing we need is you tipping the scales the way you would with a panic attack."
"She's not—"
"Oh, I've noticed," Tony agreed. His voice sounded just a bit strangled. "It's not much better on the metaphysical side of things either. She's definitely there, but also very much not."
"Could she—" Natasha started only to cut off when the girl turned her green gaze towards her suddenly. For all her normal stoicism, the spy visibly winced at the way the defensive aura flexed around her. Deliberately, Tony crinkled his bag of blueberries to draw attention back to him.
"You're not a super spy, are you, sweetheart?" Tony asked. The girl just watched him. Near her knobby knee, Bucky's hand twitched. "Looks like Princess Aurora is finally waking up. Nobody do anything stupid in the next few minutes, okay?"
"Tony—" Steve froze as his words earned him a flick of the girl's gaze. He swallowed hard and continued. "it's Bucky."
"Yasha," the girl corrected, sounding like an angry rattlesnake hissing a warning. "His name is Yasha, and he is mine!"
"No one is arguing that—"
"You can't have him back!"
"What?" Steve blurted before thinking anything through. Tony would probably lecture him later, mocking how often Steve's oh-so-allauded battle strategies were actually just different ways of him putting his foot in it. Him and Natasha would probably make a drinking game out of it, with Clint and Thor joining in for the excuse to drink their own body weight in one setting. "We're not Hydra."
"He's an idiot," Tony said, spilling out a handful of blueberries before popping them into his mouth. He chewed a few times before swallowing to continue speaking. "Jumps out of airplanes without parachutes, beats against Nat here—that sort of stupidity. Not the join the super-Nazi organization kind of stupidity."
"Stevie's been jumping out of planes without 'chutes again?" Bucky asked with the same accent that Nat got when she was either severely concussed or on the edge of passing out drunk. The little girl growled at them in warning as she shifted position to be able to look at Bucky's face. He gave her the same smile that Steve remembered him using with his little sisters. "It's okay, koytonek. They're not going to hurt us."
"Nyet," she denied, shaking her head hard enough to make its brim flap. Then she said something in Russian that Steve couldn't follow but which made Nat flinch and Tony wince. Bucky just put his left hand on her back and tugged her down to lay against his chest. Steve noticed the metal glint to the hand right as Tony perked up like a dog scenting a treat.
"Is that a prostethic?" Tony asked, already shuffling forward to get a closer look at it. "Is it fully articulated? It looks like it, but how did they get it to read the bio-electrical signals properly? That's been the major stumbling block—who made this?"
"Hydra," Bucky said in a clipped tone that could have given the Arctic competition for how chilly it was. Tony nodded as if he expected that response. He moved even closer to the pair on the ground, not paying any attention to the low warning growl coming from the girl or how the defensive aura was flexing prickly all around them. Instead of watching them, though, the girl buried her face into the gap between Bucky's shoulder and neck.
"Well, then I can definitely do better after I've gotten a few scans to work with," Tony said as he ran his free hand over the metal arm. He whined in a way that Steve really didn't want to think too hard about. "Hello, darling. Aren't you a thing of beauty?" Tony winked down at Bucky who was watching him with a confused expression. "And the person attached ain't that hard on the eyes either. So, wanna tell us who your mighty protector is and if we maybe need to be closing a missing child case?"
"Harini is mine," Bucky said with a tone even colder than his answer before. Tony shrugged as if Bucky wasn't glaring like he would kill him before allowing him to take the little girl away. Then he held out the bag of blueberries again.
"Fair enough," Tony agreed readily before tilting the bag of blueberries towards him. "Blueberry? There should also be broth in the bag that Cap brought down. If either of you have a metabolism to match the blond beefcake over there, then you're already feeling like you're starving."
"Stark," Natasha said and then stopped as if she had just communicated a whole thought. Tony seemed to understand the message at least. He still gave a dismissive wave with the hand that had been stroking Bucky's arm. Natasha gave a severe frown, clearly not following what wasn't being said.
"They're pack," Steve explained. He still couldn't smell Harini, which was driving his senses slowly haywire as they stretched to more firmly establish her presence, but he didn't need to in order to know the truth of that. He just knew instinctively from watching them. "They're family in every way that matters."
"The bond is strong, too," Tony added as Bucky took a berry from the bag only to offer it to Harini. "Enough so to indicate that Harini was online already when it started and established enough to show that they've been a pack for at least a few years now."
"I see," Natasha said with a flat tone. Steve noticed her openly assessing the girl again, taking in the scars covering the thin limbs. He didn't need to be a guide to know that she had just decided that Harini was under her protection.
That could only be a good thing, given that Steve was fairly certain that Tony had already decided the same thing about both Bucky and Harini.
Steve's acceptance had never been in question, of course.
After all, he was with Bucky until the end of the line no matter what.