I. - Rockwell, Maine: 2000.

It's hard to believe time passes so slowly. And yet, it isn't slow at all.

Morning sunlight glanced off the windows of the wrap-around beach house that stood just up the hill from the lower grassy landing of the Rockwell lighthouse. A man around his early fifties sat on a porch swing, effortlessly typing on a keyboard with one hand. The veins on his wrinkled skin protruded now and again as he wrote an article for the local newspaper he was employed to – a career John Rice had done for years on end. Hogarth meanwhile...

"Hoggie," A voice said from the window screen-enclosed area.

"I'm out here, Julies." He called into the grey-holed panels. "Just finishing the front page."

"Any promising young journalists?" Julianne asked as she wheeled herself outside.

"Oh, they come and go. I'm glad I could finally make it back to my home town."

She grimanced. "Last night was your first time back in this town in over thiry years, Bub."

Hogarth looked up at his younger sister and smiled. The forty-one-year-old woman gave him a look and tossed her silver-streaked black braid over one shoulder. A car suddenly turned up the winding road and parked in the driveway; two adults with children exited the vehicle.

"Be nice," Julianne prodded her older brother's arm.

He grinned and the yellow of his teeth showed. "Aren't I always, Sis?"

"Grandma!" the youngest boy cried out happily and ran up to give her a hug.

A preteen boy merely lagged behind his cell-phone engrossed, suited father as the twenty – something mother strode up with thinned-blonde hair and full red lips to give Julianne a strong armed hug; the son-in-law peered over at the older adults, offering up a polite nod.

"Boy!" Hogarth called over to him loudly, "What a trip you all must have had!"

Julianne sent him a suppressed look of mock rage, trying hard not to laugh.

The young man nodded again feverishly and walked towards the edge of the hillside.

When Hogarth looked down, his half - nephew was staring up at him curiously; the boy was only five-years-old. The man smiled in welcome and invited the boy to sit on his left knee. A smile flickered across his face and he hopped onto the suddenly sore leg. Hogarth grinned and beared it before showing his new charge the article he'd been writing up for the paper.

There was a third presence beside them.

"Oh, not you too!" Julianne's daughter exclaimed. "Honestly… strange outer space types of phenomenon is the last piece of crap I want the kids exposed to, Mom. Do you not agree?"

The older woman assumed a protective expression. "Honestly, I don't dear." She wheeled her way over and put a hand on her brother's arm. "The matter is open to intrepretation."

But her daughter only scowled, returning to the car to retrieve their luggage.

"Do you really believe in aliens?" the small boy asked.

Hogarth smiled and set the laptop aside. "They're real if you believe they are." he said.

"Well, Dad and Mom think Uncle Garth is a little..." Everyone turned to the older boy.

He swallowed hard.

"Go on, son." Hogarth grinned widely. "There isn't much I haven't heard."

It suddenly turned quiet as the man's chatter away from the house ceased. They turned as one towards the source of the son-in-law's attention; a strange silver streak of light was in the sky, making perculiar patterns across the big blue backdrop. Hogarth stood up straight.

"Everyone, in the house!"

The boys complied immediately while Julianne had to practically drag her whimpering child in by the arm, and being able to control her wheelchair perfectly at the same time she had nearly all of them inside the house. Except for one person. Hogarth yelled out for the man staring with wide eyes and a limp, cell-phone holding arm to come inside. But soon it was very clear that he wasn't about to budge an inch. Grumbling a curse word, Hogarth limped out towards him and managed to wheel him over to face him. The young man was stunned.

"Listen, buddy. When I say 'get in the house' I mean GO!" He shoved him in the direction of the beach home, took one last look at the gleaming metal object hurtling in his wake and managed to limp his way back over to the porch. But to his shock the boys waited outside.

Hogarth glanced over at the frightened man as he rushed passed them and into the door.

"Son of a gun," the older man muttered. What a coward his niece had married.

A giant wave suddenly appeared over the base of the hill and Hogarth found that he had to grab onto his half - nephew as the surge of the water thundered passed them. Shouts and yelling came from inside, but Hogarth managed to wrap his arm around a porch rail and hold on for dear life. Once the brute force of the wave passed, he anxiously glimpsed to see the brown-haired, green-eyed boy staring up at him - and then with a wildly excited little grin.

"Exciting enough for ya?" Hogarth asked him.

He nodded energetically.

"My baby!" His niece-in-law cried out and bolted from the door, yanking the child to herself.

"Mama..."

"Dear, God!" She snarled from behind a make-up melted face. "What do you think -!.?"

"Honey!" her husband pointed out at trees in the distance - a grin on his face: "Look!"

From atop a swinging conifer, the oldest boy was clinging and laughing.

Hogarth hid his smile by glaring up at a water-drenched Pygmy emerging from the waters.

"Bonzai." He said under his breath.

...

With a long stretch, a seventy-year-old Dean McCoppin stepped out of his residence and on into the brilliant sunshine. He visored his eyes with his hand as he waved patiently to the town's new garbage personel. It would seem that Rockwell would be the last town in the state of Maine to switch to the big clunking pieces of metal called garbage trucks. But after legends of the Iron Giant had faded out and eventually Dean had had to relocate his well perserved Giant statue back to his cleared out junkyard, he had just accepted the change.

He wasn't a sculptor; he wasn't really anything. His time was spent watching TV as he had plenty of money to live off of, and paying the occasional visit to his daugther. That was life.

As the man ran a hand through his white hair and started out to check for the paper, there was something that caught his eye off towards the side of the wire-wrapped lot. A flawless and intricately crafted rocketship resembling the one from the first lunar landing of 1969 in all of its glory stood before him in dark grey and copper laced splendor. Dean sighed lightly.

"Giant..." He grinned; his suspicions over the missing pieces of metal from his scrap yard all these years finally confirmed. "But, wait," the man teared up, "That has to mean Hogarth is finally back." At this revelation, Dean's watery brown eyes turned towards his work shop -:

"It's time."

II. - At the old Rockwell power plant, late day...

The news of Taylor had opened up deep wounds Hogarth had thought were sealed over all of these years. While Pygmy had stayed behind with Julianne; who had told him the news, Hogarth had decided to seek out time alone. His tired, wet eyes levelled with the top of the reconstructed yet abandoned power station. Apparently it had been this way since the late seventies. It was one of many things Hogarth had not been a part of. He let his head hang.

"God, please... protect her. Let Taylor know that I never stopped loving her."

"Hogarth." the voice was just a whisper; barely audible to the man.

But the speaker needn't have been loud as Hogarth knew the person's voice anywhere.

With a heavy sigh, thirty four years quickly dissolved. He pressed his forehead into his hand and started breathing faster. Something moved closer behind him and enclosed near his left side. Hogarth reached out and felt something cool... metallic almost. He smiled slowly as his hand closed around the tip of an iron-patched finger, only to fade as he examined it closely.

Brown oxidiation had started to erode the smoke-gray. Hogarth looked further down along the big hand as he took a seat on the close-toed foot behind him. Patch after patch of deep brown made unattractive splotched streaks up the once pure gray arm. He smiled again at the invitation the hand suddenly seemed to give to him, and climbed with some assistance. From there, the ground left Hogarth and he was elevated upward. He didn't, however, turn.

"It's been a long time, old pal."

"Yes," the deep voice answered at a normal level, calm, "It has... but I never left."

Hogarth turned to look at the gentleness in the robot's aged white eyes.

"The door's always been open," He patted his chest, "The house is vacant nowadays."

The Giant's lower shutters slid up. "I've never been able to fit into a house, Hogarth."

Fresh tears filmed the man's eyes. "That doesn't mean the offer ever went anywhere."

Without another word, Hogarth held out his arms as the Giant brought him in closely.

"I've waited for you."

"I'm here." He pressed closer to the rusted metal chest.

"I didn't give up..."

Hogarth looked up at the devotion gleaming in his best friend's eyes.

"That's right," he wiped at his own, breathing with a shudder, "You never gave up on me."

"If it's all right," a voice suddenly called up to them, and they both looked down in surprise as a red motorcycle swung around to stop just feet from them, "It's been three decades in the making, but I thought I owed someone their old bike back." Dean flashed them a grin.

"I'll be damned, McCoppin." Hogarth grinned back down. "It's been thirty damn years."

"Still the king of Coolsville, Mr. Hughes?" his white brow raised. The Giant turned sideways.

"Well?" He asked interestedly.

"Downtown Coolsville..." Hogarth said wryly, crossing his arms and smirking, "Popluation...:"

The trio answered as one.

"Us!"

...

"I will never give up on you, Hogarth." The Giant said as he placed the limping man atop his shoulder. "I knew you would choose your path in life," he smiled, "And it wouldn't be mine."

"It took a trip to the future to make me realize that." Hogarth agreed seriously.

"You really believed you weren't good enough...?" his friend started to question.

"I did." He nodded shamelessly. "But... maybe everyone does at one time."

"It just takes a protector to make them see it another way." The Giant encouraged.

"Or a best pal," Hogarth told him sincerely, holding up the nub of his amputated right arm.

In a simple gesture, the Giant unscrewed his left hand and placed it atop his open shoulder. Exchanging fulfilled looks, both friends walked off into the fading sunset to join their family...

Their combined shadows matched perfectly in the lengthening greyness.

The End.

A/N: Thank you to EVERYONE who read and reviewed, you know who you are *cough* Blackdragon/Black Valentine *cough* . ;) Seriously, thank you for stickin' around all this time!

It's meant a lot.

Lavenderpaw