Disclaimer: I don't own it. Bah.
Spoilers: Uh... The miniseries, only.
A/N: My first Tin Man fic. Enjoy.

(originally posted at reset winter over on LiveJournal)

That's the woman I'm going to marry.

He'd said that, twenty years ago, to Irwin Slotch, his bunkmate at the O.Z.'s one-and-only police academy, a place most everyone referred to as the Forge, when he saw a younger Adora Gryn walking through the market in Central City. She's been so pretty then – she always was – all tall and blonde and leggy, with a laugh you could hear half a mile away.

He'd meant it, too. Of course he'd meant it. He'd married her, hadn't he? They got married right after he became a bona fide Tin Man and a few years later Jeb had come along and he was happier than he ever could be again.

Except for one thing. It was a little niggling thought at the back of his mind, one he usually ignored, or pretended to.

Did he really love her? Or did he marry her because Irwin spread what he said around and there was nothing he could do but woo her, otherwise he'd never live it down?

He'd never regretted Jeb, though. Jeb was everything good about him and Adora, smashed together and made perfect.

At least, that's what Adora'd thought.

He never voiced his thoughts on the subject to his (late) wife: that Jeb was his own person with some inherited traits, but in the end he was his own and nobody else's.

Never once in the past eighteen years had the thought that was on a continuous loop gone through his head.

Was it all a façade? Did I trick myself into believing it was love?

Because now, whenever he looks at this other woman, this savior of the O.Z., he can't remember Adroa setting his bones on fire the way this girl does wit just a look.

And he knows he shouldn't. And he knows he can't.

But by any god there is, and all the stars in the sky and anything else he can think of, he swears he loves this woman, this savior, who woke him up and saved him. DG.

He sees her talking to other men, and then they touch her – especially in innocuous ways, because he can't – he wants to slam their heads against the nearest pillar until his hands are covered in blood.

Raw has started giving him odd looks.

Sometimes he thinks these things when he sees her talking to Jeb. He can't – won't, shouldn't – stop himself from it, because a queen has to confer with her Army's commander, but they spring from the dark reaches before he can stop them.

He also can't stop from feeling smug about being the only straight man in the O.Z. to have seen the queen in what could politely be called a nightie, but what was in all actuality a negligee.

Sometimes they were lacy, and on one occasion red, lacy, and mildly see-through. He still woke up in the middle of the night, hot and bothered, after dreaming of her coming to him in it.

He knows that, while the former queen (Glynna, she was called; her actual first name was Glinda, though) and Ahamo wanted their daughter to marry and give them grandchildren, she was in no hurry. She would tell her parents that every time they visited from Finaqua, in quiet but firm tones that plainly said, "I am the Queen," to everyone.

Sometimes, his dream would be about her telling him she loved him and was waiting for him, if only he'd see.

He still didn't know if he were miserable or happy that, as the head of the Tin Men – the "Top Shield" – his duty was the lead on the Queen's protection detail. He didn't even know why she gave him the post. He'd've understood if she made him one of her bodyguards, but the primary? He never did know what went on behind those big blue eyes.

At least he got to keep his hat.

It had only been three months since the withc had been banished from Azkadellia, but DG had grown so much since then. He remembered the tantrum – there really was no other word for it – she'd thrown when her mother had told her she would be queen now.

It took three days for the princess royal, Az, and her father to break through the magical barricade around DG's rooms.

He'd just climbed down from the balcony above and made her let him in. He wasn't about to let her stay there, trapped and alone, until someone could get through. Not that he didn't regret it. Three days of her moaning and complaining about her situation. Eventually he just started to him and she got the picture and shut up.

But when she complained, she was in her Other Side pajamas and apparently didn't wear undergarments with them, and, well… the palace was cold.

He goes in to wake her up every morning. When she first asked him to, he asked why, and she told him that he was the only one he'd trust to do it and the only she knew would wake her up, since the palace maids were far too nice.

He goes in one morning and she's already awake, which is unusual. She's sitting, curled up, in the window seat, barely covered by her sleepwear.

"Sorry," he mutters gruffly, because he can't stammer.

"No, it's all right, Wyatt," she says, and immediately he knows something's up. She only calls him that when she has something important to tell him.

Or in his dreams, when she screams it out, hair strewn across his pillow, nails digging in his back.

"Please, come here." And she looks over at him with those huge blue eyes so alike his own, but at the same time so not. "Sit," she tells him, motioning to the tiny space at the end of the window seat. He squeezes himself in – it's a small window seat, and he's a big man – and turns to face her.

"Yes?" He leaves off the 'your majesty' because this early in the morning she's prone to give people a day-long case of static touch if 'your majestied' too much.

She gazes at him, face much closer because she's moved to sit so she's shoulder-to-shoulder with him, and one hand hesitantly reaches up to cup his cheek. When her lips touch his, he doesn't know what to think.

Oh, but he does, and before he knows it, his hands have moved of their own accord and she's on his lap, pressed so close that neither one of them can breathe.

He'd moved so that his back was to the wall with the window to his left, but she was still on his lap, snuggling to get closer to him, her small hands on either side of his face holding it to hers.

Soon they both need to breath and she looks at him and says, breathlessly, "I've wanted to do that since we stopped the witch."

He's brushing her hair out of her face and murmurs in response, "I wish you had," before he can force his tongue to say that this is wrong, that they can't do this, he's just a Tin Man and she deserves someone much better.

She's kissing his face now – hesitant, fluttering, delicate little kisses – and all he can think about is how the top of her nightgown has been dragged down and so much more of her is visible and he's so tempted to take this too far, right there on the window seat that he almost doesn't hear her when she says –

"I love you."

The look on his face must've been shocked because she hurried on to say, "You don't have to say anything – please, don't – and I didn't mean to say anything, but it just slipped out and I'm rambling." She gives him an embarrassed look and her cheeks are bright red which matches her bruised lips, where he'd been a little too rough.

And before he can say that, while he is attracted to her and likes her a great deal, he doesn't know if he'll ever recover from Adora's death, he says –

"I love you. So much."

And he does. And he's never loved anyone – except Jeb, but that's different – this much. He wants to say a million things to her, but he doesn't know where to start, so he's just repeating himself.

"I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you," he's saying, in his low, gravely voice.

And now she's laughing, with tears running down her face.

And he's never been happier, and he can't imagine anything topping this.

And he knows that for certain.