Disclaimer: I own nothing in the Tin Man 'verse. Nothing and no one. Because (at the moment) I'm playing only with the Sci-Fi original characters.
He'd tried to leave her behind, he really had. A naïve and innocent girl had no place in his plans for revenge. He couldn't watch her faith in the goodness of people fail, not because she saw what he planned to do to Zero. Her light glowed invitingly, the innocence calling to his own darkly tinged soul like a moth to a flame. He refused to be the one who destroyed that in her.
He called her a kid, hoping against hope that she would get offended and leave him to his vengeance. It was no business of his getting involved in her life in anyway. He insulted her, speaking about how she would cut and run at the first sign of danger. The lie fell heavy from his lips. If a small lie to her then would protect her from being tinged with his darkness, then it was worth its weight in gold. No matter how bitter it tasted.
But damn her. She refused to back down, falling back to nurse the wounds he'd purposefully inflicted with his words. Instead she fought back, surprising him like little else did anymore, calling him out on the fact that she'd been the one to save him, not the other way around.
Women in his (admittedly out-of-date) experience did not have claws, They were more prey than predator, defenseless and needing to be saved. Little girls did not save policemen from the evils of the world, it was ass backwards.
He'd tried to compartmentalize her away neatly into a little box in his mind. It did not work as well as he'd hoped. So he attempted to scare her with horror stories of the Pa-Pay. But, once again, she refused to yield.
He sighed heavily, this was not going as he'd planned. Damn it.