Author's note :

Ok ok ok so I was totally shocked when I began to search out Tin Man fanfiction mere minutes after watching the show on Netflix, I know I'm a bit behind the times heh. Anyways as I was saying. I was a bit shocked to discover the huge amount of pairings done between DG and Cain or DG and Glitch or even the Cain and Glitch pairings….not that I am against any of it just that it was a bit odd at first. HOWEVER – I have actually grown a bit accustom to the DG and Cain pairing and I have to say I'm quickly growing attached to the idea. So here is my attempt at the world of Tin Man. May be a bit off universe but please bear with me I'll make it worth the while. Hope everyone enjoys!

Disclaimer : Of course I don't own Tin Man…if I did I'd be writing books carrying on the story not fanfictions! Lol :P anyways no I don't own Tin Man or anything of its storylines or characters or anything else. Thanks!

When Life Is Anything But Kind

Tin Man. I had been one for so long, I couldn't actually remember not being a anything else. Being a Tin Man had been my life's ambition. Even after my family had been ripped from me, for my unyielding refusal to bow to a tyrant, I was still a Tin Man. Not even being locked away for 15 annuals could break me of my need to wear the symbol of Central City's peacekeepers. It was the only constant I had ever known. When my parents passed on being a Tin Man was all I had in the world. When Adora and Jeb were taken from me, I had only my will as a Tin Man to thank for not succumbing to the insanity. And now, again I found myself leaning heavily upon my badge. Being a Tin Man was all I was, through and through. People came and went in my life like shadows but my badge had stayed with me. I gritted my teeth, sometimes I truly hated just how much I needed my job to survive.

The greatest man I had ever had the joy to know had made me promise on my word as a Tin Man to never leave her side. To protect her from anything and everything that could or would bring her harm. And I had, I had kept my promise. She was safe now behind the thick walls of the Ice Palace, with her family. The realization that she might truly no longer needed me was more devastating that it should have been. Why did I care so much about her safety? Why was I stalling to leave? Truth be told I knew exactly why I wasn't leaving. But what right did I have to even entertain the thought? I was old, broken, the left overs from another life. She was young with a full life ahead of her. I wished I could punch myself squarely in the jaw, knock sense into myself.

I did not want to leave, but after burying my son what else was left for me here? Nothing but memories and a hell of a lot of baggage. A parent should never have to carry the burden of out living a child, let alone having to carry that burden twice. .

I felt my hands ball up into fists, as I watched them from the recesses of the palace gates. DG and Glitch had wandered out towards the lake after lunch, DG keeping him from the water's edge and running after him when he took off unexpectedly. The Princess never let the headcase out of her sight for more than a few seconds. The last time Glitch had unwittingly slipped her watchful eye he had nearly drowned, apparently he had forgotten how to swim. It was me that had to jump in and save the zipperhead, much to my annoyance. DG had been frantic, when I had pulled the two of us from the freezing water. It was all her sister could do to keep her at bay while I attempted to pump the water from Glitch's lungs. I had made the mistake of looking into the DG's face as I pounded on the headcase's chest. If my heart could have contracted I think it would have. She was completely terrified; I knew it would completely destroy her to loose him. Somewhere in the back of my mind it clicked, she could never love me because whether she knew it or not the stupid headcase had stolen her heart. I had almost given up when Glitch sat straight up spewing water and spit directly into my face. It was the last time that DG had really acknowledged me. Not that I had given her a true chance to do so since the incident. There was more than one way to protect a princess and it did not always require being in plain sight.

The off beat click tick click tick of my heart of tin reminded me that I shouldn't care. The last of what humanity I had left when DG and Glitch freed me from the tin maiden had died with my son. I was as heartless as the Tin Man whose name I carried on my badge. The scar was all that visibly remianed from that day. The last day I had heard my son laugh, seen him smile that sideways grin that would spread across his face. I felt my mind slipping back though I fought it with every fiber of my being.

"Two little princess dancing in a row. Spinning fast and freely on their little toes…" DG's voice floated softly through the open door of Glitch's quarters.

It was a quiet night, perhaps a bit too quiet for my taste. I was standing outside the headcase's room waiting for DG to emerge. She and I both had woken to his screaming. Another bad dream, a side effect of his surgery. Which of course was a complete failure. His mind had been returned to him, but completely wiped of any trace of Ambrose. He still glitched and still had a hard time remembering things. I felt sorry for the zipperhead. To me it seemed his only gain was the nightmares that haunted him, on a very regular basis. I hadn't had a goodnight's sleep in weeks, and I knew DG hadn't either.

She never complained though. I think ever since Raw had shown us Glitch's last moments as his old self she felt responsible for him. Like it was her fault the witch had removed his brain. I stifled a yawn, as DG tip toed out to join me, shutting the door with skilled silence.

"He's sleeping now, I gave him some of that potion of mother's. He should sleep through anything now.." She offered, tiredly heading off to bed. I followed her, making sure she found her way safely back to her room. I watched her collapse into her bed and pull the covers up around her. I had no doubt she was unconscious before her head hit the pillow. I moved on to my room across the hall and fell stiffly into an arm chair by the fireplace. I'm not sure how long I had been sitting there or at what point I had fallen asleep; but the sound of gun fire and the high pitch scream that seemed to rip through me had me darting for my gun. I ran from my room checking on DG she was gone, and my blood ran cold.

"Azcadee, DG RUN!" Jeb's commanding voice carried from the other end of the hall. I moved faster than I thought an old man like me should be capable of. Bursting into the Azcadelia's room I assessed quickly, nailing the Longcoat in the back of the head, that struggling to hold DG in check. The sister's were separated by at least four black coats. There was no way for them to work their protection magic. Jeb was injured, I assumed from the gun shot I had heard previously. Despite his apparent weakness he kept Azcadelia behind him no matter which way the Longcoats came at them. I took down three of them easily. The element of surprise still my tool, but I wasn't the only one using it.

"DG LOOK OUT!" her sister screamed. I only had seconds to react. A fifth Longcoat had emerged from the window his gun squarely leveled at DG's head. I threw myself at her no time to take aim myself. I felt a jolt in my back and searing pain flowing through me like wild fire. I barely remember someone snatching my gun from my loosened grip and three shots rang out in near succession, before all the world went black and still.

There was no logical explanation for my survival. I should have died that night, just like Jeb, but I hadn't. I had been kept alive by some contraption glitch had suddenly remembered he had built and was still stored in the far corner of his old lab. In the time the machine provided him, Glitch had created a replacement for the heart that had quite literally exploded in my chest.

Click tick. Click tick. I rubbed my chest, feeling the echo's of pain I had gone through for this fake organ to work. I clenched my teeth, if I hadn't fallen asleep maybe I could have saved all of them. Jeb would still be here, not have bled out like a horse put down for a broken leg. But the sisters had only enough time to keep one of us from death's door, and in the end it had been me.

Somewhere in the distance I heard DG laughing and something lit up inside me but died just as quickly when I remembered it wasn't me she was laughing with. There was not much left for me here, or anywhere in the O.Z. for that matter. It had been made abundantly clear to me that DG was safe, that she didn't need me to protect her anymore. The problem was it had been the Queen that released me from my duty, and she was not the one to whom I'd sworn my vow. It was a man that was dead, someone that could never release anyone ever again. So I stayed keeping a watchful eye on the youngest Princess of the O.Z., not for honor, not for myself, but because I had made a promise and Tin Men always keep their promises.