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Here we are wandering, aimlessly roaming
[For centuries, millennia, it is a secret. There is a world hidden beneath the one that the normies know of. It is Sentinels and Guides in a secret, secluded network that spans nations, settles into the fabric of time and history like the gentle overlaying network of veins beneath skin -- essential but unthought of in the greater span of life. And for the longest time it is hidden, mostly. There are slips of course -- how could there not be? -- but it is easier to take care of then, easier to hide and fix and maybe they are some sort of viciousness and animalistic society in those days. There are traditionalists still who harken back, sigh gently over the good old days and all that the modern world doesn’t allow.
Whatever the case is, it gets harder after the World Wars, after the rise and fall of empires and the steadily building rise of technology and all that comes with it. All it takes is for someone to screw up in a painfully public situation -- some Sentinel zoning in the middle of a busy sidewalk, and turning upon the first person who presses hand to shoulder, until there is blood upon the sidewalk and screaming passerbies and the paling face of a Sentinel rapidly regaining awareness of the world around her. Their world falls around them, people coming forth with stories, theories, flushing Sentinels and Guides out of the woodwork until there is Fact to Theory and they are branded and known and studied.
It happens when he is young, when the world still seems colored through the rose-hued glasses of childhood, and the worries of adults seem far away indeed. Ivan doesn’t really know about the world his parents live in, hasn’t come online -- senses flaring and strength like liquid luck through his veins. No, then, everything is summer and laughter peppered in the too long silences between his parents that seem so obvious in retrospect. For years, nothing concrete happens, though there is fear in the world and anger and hate and steadily climbing violence and protestation. And he grows up, slowly, steadily, already unusual for the violet of his eyes and his height.
He is seventeen when the first Act is passed, slowly paring down the jobs and rights that any Sentinel or Guide wants. It’s slow in the beginning, quiet, more so about compromise and fiercely fought lines that nobody is in a true hurry to cross. But it picks up, spins out of control, until there is talk of Collars and dehumanizing words tossed around like a Sentinel doesn’t bleed the same red as anybody else, like a Guide is any less than human because the emotions that skitter at fingertips and settle within other's blood and head with a simple touch and whisper. Ivan learns to hate it, to hate the world he lives in, to hate the blood in his veins that will eventually doom him to a life that is little but chains and cages.
And eventually, eventually, the Registration Act passes.
Ivan is nineteen, and he has yet to Awaken. A month later, and he wakes with the roar of his surroundings in his ears and the foul scent of a dorm around him and the steady thumpthumpthump of heartbeats like little dizzying beats of morse around him. The handle to the bathroom crumples in his grip, the porcelain shell of the toilet cracking as he throws up. He hides it for a week -- pale and shaking and wanting to deny to his dying breath that he is not anything but normal.
It does not work.
Life ticks on, even though he’s got a shiny new registration number and a year of schooling under his belt with nothing else to show. His sisters are safe still, stable -- he prays that they will never be what he has become -- and his parents and him fight too much for it to be safe for either. So he leaves, goes out into the world to make some sort of a living. But fear is a heady thing, and though he hides the strength that surges in his limbs, and the way his senses sometimes spiral so closely to out of control it’s uncomfortable, well, Ivan finds that he fits a profile. Even if he wasn't a Sentinel, sometimes he thinks people would be scared of him anyway, hiss and spit at his feet, deny him work and laugh when he can do little about it.
(One time, he cannot hold it back, and it is there in the snarl of bared teeth and hands that bruise and break bones. He leaves town in a hurry, knuckles bruised and bloodied -- not all of it his -- and runs until he collapses, heaving through his sobs because he is hunted, he is little more than the animal they think he is.)
He lives like this for years, two, three, he does not know for certain -- it fades in the crush of control and memory and fear. Things get better after meeting Raivis, quiet and shy and trembling as the boy was. The first time their fingers link it’s good, a trembling ease slipping up his spine until the tension that perpetually settled between his shoulder-blades faded in the face of a potential bond. It is nothing Ivan ever expected to find, even though there were hushed stories told of the Rightness that came with a bond, the difference the steady presence of a Guide can make to a Sentinel. He hadn't believed it then, but he does now, with hands in his and the slight warmth of Raivis curled in his lap, gently coaxing until the tendrils of empathy and comfort his Guide exudes eases into the fracturing dark of his mind. They are practicing, gently, slowly, because Raivis is still new to this world and this life, and the bond between them is tenuous still and new like the first green shoots in spring. But it is good, and so Ivan smiles at the very corners of his mouth and nudges their foreheads together, murmurs a low: ]
Good, just like that.
Whatever the case is, it gets harder after the World Wars, after the rise and fall of empires and the steadily building rise of technology and all that comes with it. All it takes is for someone to screw up in a painfully public situation -- some Sentinel zoning in the middle of a busy sidewalk, and turning upon the first person who presses hand to shoulder, until there is blood upon the sidewalk and screaming passerbies and the paling face of a Sentinel rapidly regaining awareness of the world around her. Their world falls around them, people coming forth with stories, theories, flushing Sentinels and Guides out of the woodwork until there is Fact to Theory and they are branded and known and studied.
It happens when he is young, when the world still seems colored through the rose-hued glasses of childhood, and the worries of adults seem far away indeed. Ivan doesn’t really know about the world his parents live in, hasn’t come online -- senses flaring and strength like liquid luck through his veins. No, then, everything is summer and laughter peppered in the too long silences between his parents that seem so obvious in retrospect. For years, nothing concrete happens, though there is fear in the world and anger and hate and steadily climbing violence and protestation. And he grows up, slowly, steadily, already unusual for the violet of his eyes and his height.
He is seventeen when the first Act is passed, slowly paring down the jobs and rights that any Sentinel or Guide wants. It’s slow in the beginning, quiet, more so about compromise and fiercely fought lines that nobody is in a true hurry to cross. But it picks up, spins out of control, until there is talk of Collars and dehumanizing words tossed around like a Sentinel doesn’t bleed the same red as anybody else, like a Guide is any less than human because the emotions that skitter at fingertips and settle within other's blood and head with a simple touch and whisper. Ivan learns to hate it, to hate the world he lives in, to hate the blood in his veins that will eventually doom him to a life that is little but chains and cages.
And eventually, eventually, the Registration Act passes.
Ivan is nineteen, and he has yet to Awaken. A month later, and he wakes with the roar of his surroundings in his ears and the foul scent of a dorm around him and the steady thumpthumpthump of heartbeats like little dizzying beats of morse around him. The handle to the bathroom crumples in his grip, the porcelain shell of the toilet cracking as he throws up. He hides it for a week -- pale and shaking and wanting to deny to his dying breath that he is not anything but normal.
It does not work.
Life ticks on, even though he’s got a shiny new registration number and a year of schooling under his belt with nothing else to show. His sisters are safe still, stable -- he prays that they will never be what he has become -- and his parents and him fight too much for it to be safe for either. So he leaves, goes out into the world to make some sort of a living. But fear is a heady thing, and though he hides the strength that surges in his limbs, and the way his senses sometimes spiral so closely to out of control it’s uncomfortable, well, Ivan finds that he fits a profile. Even if he wasn't a Sentinel, sometimes he thinks people would be scared of him anyway, hiss and spit at his feet, deny him work and laugh when he can do little about it.
(One time, he cannot hold it back, and it is there in the snarl of bared teeth and hands that bruise and break bones. He leaves town in a hurry, knuckles bruised and bloodied -- not all of it his -- and runs until he collapses, heaving through his sobs because he is hunted, he is little more than the animal they think he is.)
He lives like this for years, two, three, he does not know for certain -- it fades in the crush of control and memory and fear. Things get better after meeting Raivis, quiet and shy and trembling as the boy was. The first time their fingers link it’s good, a trembling ease slipping up his spine until the tension that perpetually settled between his shoulder-blades faded in the face of a potential bond. It is nothing Ivan ever expected to find, even though there were hushed stories told of the Rightness that came with a bond, the difference the steady presence of a Guide can make to a Sentinel. He hadn't believed it then, but he does now, with hands in his and the slight warmth of Raivis curled in his lap, gently coaxing until the tendrils of empathy and comfort his Guide exudes eases into the fracturing dark of his mind. They are practicing, gently, slowly, because Raivis is still new to this world and this life, and the bond between them is tenuous still and new like the first green shoots in spring. But it is good, and so Ivan smiles at the very corners of his mouth and nudges their foreheads together, murmurs a low: ]
Good, just like that.
no subject
There's still a tremble in his body, but so far that's simply been the case, whether he's engaged in this or ordering tea from an unfamiliar counter.
It runs in the family, as has his role.
His elder brothers both escaped it, nearly, so nearly giving their parents hope that the family was free of its unfortunate line of Guides.
They've all had the same name, in backwards honor of the lost. Really it's a warning to the present that know; he won't be with us for long.
His uncle was lost, and found a minute too late.
His grandfather was rejected, thrown to his death.
His great-grandfather's bond was broken almost soon as it was realized.
Might as well be the same thing.
The further back one went down the line there could be only cringe after cringe.
And Raivis knows, even with everyone avoidant of the subject. He's too young to have had to fear being branded, but by fifteen, he's too aware to see a great difference, between an ugly mark and his own name.
But since he heard it the first time, from that lost, lost breath, something changed. The meaning of Raivis turns on its head to become the only thing that matters in the world, so abruptly then he burst into tears, hard.
Raivis is a Guide's name.
His hands turn slightly in Ivan's to gain a better hold, his voice steadier than their shaking may imply. What toll it takes on his fragile frame is not harmful, but - in his opinion - terribly easy to notice. He can hardly bear the thought of what impression tougher practice would make for his prospects as a Guide... but at once it's kept their bond from unraveling, the acceptance of his Sentinel that careful is key.
He wants to be strong enough as much as he feels he must.
Raivis has yet to find Ivan in his deepest place, nothing near a point of no return. But he wants to be ready for it, quite seriously -
And then he feels another forehead against his own, already familiar as though he's known it always. For a moment his thoughts can quiet while his voice takes the reigns, his eyes lifting in hope.]
Ah - ? It's working?
no subject
This is more than he has ever expected to have after the past few years. If he's telling the truth, it is more than he expected to have long before that, too. But while Raivis might be from a family dotted with Guides, Ivan has the blood of Sentinels thick in his veins. Sometimes he thinks it funny that he was the only one of his siblings to come online, but mostly he is relieved. It is a thick, clinging feeling, one that seeps in his blood and pools in his belly like ice. He is frozen in his relief, desperate and furious at his own jealousy.
(But if his sisters are safe from the persecution he faced -- well, Ivan wouldn't trade with them at all. He would do anything for his sisters, even crucify himself with the burden of their own biology.)
For now, he rubs his nose against Raivis' own, his smile a delicate, fleeting thing.]
How do you feel? Do you need to stop?
no subject
The flash of his teeth in his smile at its best gets cut all too short, and hidden again they chatter outside of his control. His own senses falter, his head seems set to swim. He's heard something, hasn't he just now...?]
Ah... haha...
[That's silly, he'd beg to laugh and say, the meaning of those sounds coming to him slowly, Of course I don't. But...]
Y...yes.
[Honesty is vital when lying could kill him; he doesn't like the truth much of the time. Yet he can't stop smiling completely, even with the trembling lip he bites between the rest of his fragile truths. He wants something to last.]
Oh, Ivan... [He can't bear to shake his head, but it turns some as if he were about to.] Why can't I...?
[There's still little he can seem to do yet. He already feels little in so many ways, and whether size or use it chills his heart like stubbornly unmelted ice. His jaw hurts from the strain. He doesn't want to think of his eyes or the blood in his veins or anything else he's unpleasantly aware of after he's pushed himself. Round as his gaze has gone since admitting it, he casts it down until he can see again.]
no subject
But his Guide is small and young, perfect, but unused to this life. The connection falters, and Ivan can feel the strain of Raivis pushing his all to the brink. So he pauses, fingertips gentled, and nods. ]
Hey, don't worry. [ It's easy, so Ivan scoops Raivis up in his arms, warm and safe, needing to keep him close and protected even if Ivan knows there's no immediate threat. ] It just takes practice, you'll get there eventually.
[ And it's true, he knows it. Ivan has such innate trust in the tiny being in his arms, he nuzzles into the soft curling mess of Raivis' hair, breathes in sharp and sweet. It's enough, it's nice to have some living, breathing person curling so close. It's nice to have the soft stability even this offers him after so long on the very edge of the precipice. ]