Title: Tin Hearts (1/1)
Fandom: SyFy's Tin Man
Characters/Pairing: DG/Cain, DG/Glitch
Genre: drama/romance/humor
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine even remotely.
Summary: "You'd make a terrible Tin Man, Glitch," DG told him. "You have too much heart." Post-series one-shot.
A/N: Another one-shot that I started a long time ago, and took advantage of a lazy Saturday and caffeine in order to finish.

Tin Hearts

War threatened; it rarely does anything else. It loomed heavily on the horizon, like gathering clouds, like sinking hearts. Cain went around with the old familiar furrow between his brows, as though the witch had returned, as though there was something afoot that he distinctly did not like. He put a shine on his breastplate with a caution that spoke of precisely-placed pride; DG was so used to his roughness, the calluses that seemed to be everywhere on his skin, the threadbare carelessness of his clothes, that she commented on the sleek gleam, asked what it was about.

"Why are you suddenly taking an interest in your own appearance?" was what, in fact, she said. Her tone was suspicious, her blue eyes narrowed, mouth pinched. Ambrose called this her I-Hate-Lemons look; though really it could have been the I-Hate-Watermelons look, or the I-Hate-Cows look; it was an expression of latent, petty, and poorly-hidden dislike, whatever the cause.

Cain favored her with his poker face in return, a look of no expression whatsoever. "What do you mean, suddenly?"

She lifted a hand to gesture at his sheen. "I mean this isn't totally in character for you. Last week that armor was covered in dust, and now you're gleaming."

"If it makes you feel better," said Cain, dropping his eyes and turning away from her, "it has nothing to do with Cedale Fouxami."

Ambrose, huddled in his comfortable chair in the corner and pretending to scribble away with a quill, stifled an undignified snigger. This was related to an earlier conversation between the two, which he had also been a party to. The Lady Cedale, with her fluttering eyelashes and ready laugh, seemed to be a source of contention.

"I just wanna know why," said DG softly, a little sulkily. Her eyes widened again, that look that always made Ambrose think there was some pure, unearthly being looking out. Some part of him that still glitched occasionally wanted to tell her this, but couldn't get much past, "Your eyes are the window of your--- or was it the door? Or the ceiling. Your eyes are the floorboards of your--- no, that's not right."

That was the trouble with trying to plan these things out beforehand.

"Draven's armies are massing to the South," said Cain unwillingly. "You know that."

"I know it. So, what, you're going to dazzle them into submission? You never shined up like this before."

"I wasn't representing you before," said Cain quietly. This had the intended effect of shushing DG effectively. She fell back a step, away from him, and dropped her chin. How long since the ordeal of the witch, how long since she had finally felt that she belonged here in the OZ? And barely two weeks since her mother had handed over the throne to the younger of her two daughters. DG could be forgiven for forgetting; the crown had been placed on a table just to the side of her chair right after the coronation, and had not been touched since, apart from the efforts of the cleaning staff to dust inside all those hard-to-reach places in the twisted gold. Cain jerked his chin towards it now.

"You ever going to wear that thing?"

"It gives me a headache," muttered DG. She shrugged, swung her arms behind her loosely, then clapped her hands together. Ambrose jumped a little at the sudden sound. "Don't try to change the subject. So now you're telling me that, what, you're going to the front?"

Cain sighed, a testy little sigh that he reserved for DG and DG alone. Everyone else, Ambrose thought, misspelling the word he was writing, got a testy big sigh. An enormous sigh, a giant sigh, a sigh that indicated everyone but Cain was, at best, incompetent and, at worst, a complete waste of the standard oxygen/nitrogen mix they were breathing and the space they were taking up. Ambrose had been a victim of the big sigh more than once.

"Your mother appointed me head of the Tin Men again. They're the only viable force the OZ has. You want to win this fight, you send me."

"Send you," repeated DG, stressing the phrase. "I'm supposed to tell you when to go. But you're not waiting for me, are you. You're going on your own."

Ambrose looked up over the top of his stack of papers, and caught a half-glance of Cain's heated gaze. That was enough. The ice in his eyes had melted, his mouth was set, and there was something around the line of his jaw that spoke of the determination of mountains, of stones, immovable as boulders.

"It's a major failing on your part, Princess," he started, but DG forestalled him. She folded her arms, fixed him with her blue gaze.

"Queen," she said.

Ambrose tilted his head to one side, and the resulting glance he caught at the new-made Queen's face made something deep within flutter, like an unknown creature spreading lacy wings in the pit of his stomach. Her expression curiously echoed that of her Tin Man, set and determined and immovable and unchangeable as the land outside.

Another sigh from Cain.

"Queen," he said, nodding. "You should have sent me before. But you didn't. We can put it down to distraction, or inexperience, or whatever you want. I have a very small window of opportunity, to stop this war before it starts. But I need to be there now."

"But you'll wait till I send you," said DG.

"No, I won't," said Cain.

There was a line drawn between them; Ambrose thought he could see it, if he squinted and turned his head halfway upside down and imagined very, very hard. It was a wavering line, pale and seemingly inconsequential, but there all the same. They toed it, Tin Man and brand-new, just-out-of-the-box Queen, booted feet and the ragged shoes from her world that she still insisted on wearing on occasion. There was a beauty in it, Ambrose thought, twitching slightly, but he couldn't define it, couldn't get a handle on it. Could only think that if this were the war, instead of to the South on the front lines, their swords would have clashed. An arc, an X, of crossed steel, both of them straining and panting, face to face, neither willing or able to give an inch.

But DG, incomprehensibly, lowered her blade first.

"Then I'm telling you to go now," she said. "You know more about this than I do, Cain."

The Tin Man tilted his head, squinting at her in confusion. "You're telling me---"

"To go," she finished. Dropped her arms from their folded position, and shrugged. "I trust you."

That was it. Ambrose marveled. She'd sheathed her metaphorical sword and managed to get him with a cleverly hidden slingshot. I trust you, she'd said, and Cain had folded like a cheap card table. It could be clearly seen in the twitch of a smile at his mouth, the way he put his hands on his hips and said, "Huh." Helpless in the face of it.

DG raised her eyebrows at him.

"Well?" she said. "Are you waiting for something, Tin Man? You're dismissed."

"Dismissed," repeated Cain.

She didn't say anything else, just waited. Now visibly hiding a smile, Cain made her a bow, then reached for her hand and kissed the air just above it.

"My lady," he said, and made his way out of the room.

Left behind, DG heaved a sigh--- she, too, had a way of sighing that signified all sorts of things about other people, but this one was a little more unreadable than usual--- and moved to her chair. She had resisted the throne of her mother, though her chosen chair was situated in the same place. It was much more comfortable, however. She subsided into it, folding one leg beneath her.

"He doesn't really care about Cedale Fouxami, you know," said Ambrose.

"We don't need to talk about it, Glitch," said DG. "It's okay."

"Fine." Ambrose shrugged. "I'm your advisor, I was just, you know. Advising you." The quill slipped to one side, and he stopped to blink at what he had written. That was odd. How in the OZ had an amended decree about public parks turned into a sentence ending and then she kissed me?

He shook his head. Something rattled.

"I don't suppose," he ventured hesitantly, "they'll need help at the front? I can be of some use, you know. You might not think so, but you'd be wrong."

"I know you can be helpful." She reached over and patted him on the shoulder. "You helped me, remember? You were always there for me, when I needed you the most."

He beamed, chuckled a little, and scribbled vigorously at the paper. "Still. If they need an extra hand, you know. I could be a soldier, too, if you wanted me to be."

DG laughed. "You'd make a terrible Tin Man, Glitch. You've got too much heart."

His slumped shoulders straightened, and a smile broke across his face like a sunrise. He had too much heart; Glitch that was, Ambrose that is had too much heart. There was the difference between himself and the Tin Man, he supposed. She was right, of course; but then, she was the Queen.

"They make armor to protect that," he ventured.

"I need you here," DG assured him, hand still on his shoulder. "This is where you do the most. You're good for me, Glitch. Ambrose, I mean--- I'm sorry, I still keep forgetting."

He shrugged. "Call me what you want, as long as you call me." A laugh erupted from him, startled and brief and quickly trapped and cut off. He blinked, and frowned lightly. "That was a dumb thing to say."

But DG was smiling at him, and she lounged sideways in her cushioned chair to wrap her arm around his shoulders in a half-hug. "What's next on the agenda?"

"Ah! The proposed alliance with the Queen of Underland. I think it's a wonderful idea, myself. You can never have too many friends."

DG's smile was fond. "Well, that's good advice, Glitch. I think I'll take it."

He tried to hide his smile behind the paper, but it shone through the edges like a miniature sun. He focused happily on what he was writing, and missed it when DG's gaze strayed momentarily towards the open door.

She gave another sigh, the kind one makes when waiting, but it was quiet, and went unnoticed by her advisor. Ambrose stabbed a period onto the end of his sentence, with a flourish, and blew on the ink to dry it.

"Perfect," he said.