Disclaimer: I, in no way, shape, or form, own the Tin Man© Sci-Fi original mini-series or the characters it contains. All publicly recognizable characters are copyrighted to Sci-Fi, and the respective artists/writers/et cetera. No infringement intended.
Continuity: Post-finale.
Characters: Wyatt Cain, DG
Warnings: Implied past-tense slash.
Summary: Cain finds a certain appreciation for numbers, and plumbs the greater mystery that is mauve.
Author's Note: Stemmed from a conversation that went from Pavlov's Dog (you'll see its influence, if you know what it is). At some point, I went glassy eyed, wandered away, and typed this up. Criticism encouraged, technical points preferable. Also, old fic is in fact old, and posted because I haven't posted anything since at least forever ago. Sorry.

(-Gregarious amounts of geekery-)

--

It really was surprising how much of re-forging a kingdom was paperwork.

Cain scowled at the quarterly report, shifting uncomfortably as the general numbness spread from his lower extremities, prickling forebodingly as it traveled up his spine. Tired eyes flicked up to the grand clock across the way, some distant part of him thinking that the small hand was working much too slowly to be accurate. A sigh gusted from his lips, stirring the scattered bits of paper and vellum about. The manuscripts and documents rasped against each other as the relocated themselves, the sound unsettlingly reminiscent of a death rattle.

Gingerly, he plucked at one dreadfully official looking report, lying askew across his desk, eyes narrowing in a vindictive glower. It wasn't as if it was his fault the tree had been chopped to bits. If it wanted to disturb anyone, it should have done that to the logger. He was just doing his job – no need to get snippy at him about it.

Pausing, Cain went back over his previous line of thought, and grimaced. Oh, he had been in this place for far too long. It was playing games with his mind. He was anthropomorphizing trees, for pity's sake!

Not for the first time (and certainly not the last), he mournfully wondered why, exactly, he had been designated for this administrative position. It wasn't as if he had any experience, after all. He was just an ex-Tin Man, a policeman – most certainly not a bloody quill jockey.

"Wow, you look homicidal."

Cain jerked upright, mouth snapping into a harsh, displeased line. Nobody got the drop on him. Gods save him, he was getting soft. "What?" He snarled without thinking, his vision not even resolving upon whomever had so disturbed his misery.

Oh.

DG hesitated, absently picking at a particularly obnoxious frill. Then, with a distinct setting of her lip, she exaggeratedly flounced about the room, taking in all the vestiges of personal space lost amid the clutter of paper and junk. "At least they're keeping you busy," She said contritely, stooping to peer at what he could only assume was an elaborate hole punch. It snapped its ornate jaws like a rabid mobat, however, as soon as her fingers came into range, so she quickly gave up on the contraption, moving along to less dangerous but equally quirky contrivances.

It was then he noted her attire, and had to forcibly restrain himself from making a face. That much frill and lace, in honestly, seemed a sin; her arms and shoulders all but disappeared into the frothy sleeves, and her legs stuck out like gawky pins holding up a mountain. Dangling bits of sheer lace and superfluous folds reminded him sharply of half melted cream-of-ice, dangling at strange angles from her ruffle-swathed body.

It was a crime against nature, he was certain. It had to be, at the very least, some sort of psychological abuse.

"You look ridiculous, kid." He grunted, after a gracelessly long pause. Then, awkwardly, he amended the slip in decorum: "I mean, you look ridiculous, Your Highness."

DG wrinkled her nose, waving off the amended greeting. "Bah. I know. Mauve is not my friend." She inelegantly smoothed down the irrepressible fluff that was her skirt, attempting to sort the cumbersome expanse into order.

Cain squinted. "It's purple."

DG looked down at herself, as if noticing the horrific dress for the first time. Her lips pursed, and she twisted her hips, likely trying to see her own rump to confirm its hue. "No," She said primly, glancing up at him with a soft, perplexed line between her eyebrows. "It's reddish purple."

He took a breath, working through the reasoning, scrupulously going over the given information, as he would have if it had been any investigation. He came to the most rational conclusion he could, uncertainly summarizing: "So… it's purple."

She gave him a long, exasperated look. "It's mauve. It's not purple enough to be purple."

"Oh," He mumbled, as if that had explicated everything. "I see."

"Mauve," She said with a note of finality, going back to her rummaging. "At least it isn't periwinkle, y'know?"

"Ah," He responded neutrally. To occupy itching fingers (when was the last time he had done anything important with his hands?), he shuffled paper about, doing his damnedest to not think about trees shrieking at him.

"So," DG suddenly declared, rising from a particularly large pile of ledgers and clutching a tomb in her spindly arms. She flipped it about before her, choosing a page at random, eyes scanning over the general figures, though truthfully glossing over most of the numbers. "This is what you do all day."

It was rhetorical, but he nodded anyway, trying to appear deeply engrossed in a long, encyclopedia-esque account of a stolen goose, which had later been recovered at the owner's home, but the well-intentioned officer had thought a full, exceedingly tedious report would be in order regardless. He would remember to kick the man down a flight of stairs when next he saw him. "Yep."

She blinked at him owlishly, and diplomatically set aside the ledger. "Looks boring."

"Yep."

"You know I've picked back up on my lessons."

The jump in conversation left him gaping in a pure flummox at the paper for a moment longer, and then his head rose, regarding her levelly. He had, in fact, not known, but he supposed it would be so; they couldn't have an uneducated ruler, after all. Though, secretly, he felt that aristocratic-tier tutoring, in and of itself, was rather unnecessary. His education had been fairly good – he was not ignorant, and he had a wonderful grasp of language and mathematics (of late, an excellent understanding of the latter, but best not to think about that), as far as his schooling had allowed him – but some levels seemed simply… surplus to requirements. Redundant, even. It wasn't a matter of how much one knew, he thought. It was how one applied such knowledge, which lent more into common sense than excessive tutoring.

Feeling, in that expectant silence, a need to somehow verbally respond, he resorted to the failsafe – ambiguous monosyllables. "Oh?"

"Mmhmm," She nodded despondently, idly flicking her fingers over the gold-gilded cover of An Inclusive Example of Judicial Law: Amended Edition, before sighing and turning her attention elsewhere. "Mostly it's Toto- Tutor. History and semantics and all that, but," She grinned, "Did you know that Glitch was my math teacher?"

Cain ducked his head, suddenly, fervently wishing he had the ability to sink into the floor. "Oh?" This time, his little monotonous response was strained, almost choked off in his throat.

Math. Arithmetic. His fingers convulsed, digging into the paper until it crinkled. Glitch and mathematics – two things, he was quickly learning, that should never be uttered in the same sentence within his hearing.

Unbidden, images of late night activities rose in his mind, sensory memories of warm arms around his waist, and sudden, breathless exhalations of numerical sequences and values whenever things started to heat up–

Complex arithmetic had taken on a special meaning for the ex-Tin Man. A special meaning he did not intend to crassly share with present company by a strained whimper that rolled around in the back of his throat.

DG, blissfully unaware, continued to prattle on animatedly, wiping her dusty fingers off on a swaddle of ruffles. "It's actually kinda fun, in a weird, rambling sort of way. I mean, I still hate math passionately, don't get me wrong, but more often than not it just ends up with us wandering around and him going off on some random tangent. I mean, you can't expect him to just stay focused on that all day," She explained needlessly, waving a hand to indicate some vague, universal notion that only she seemed aware of. "And sometimes he remembers for a few minutes but then something happens and he gets distracted, or, like that last time, the, uhm, G-T-P-S… L… thing went off."

"Huh." Cain grunted, gradually easing the death-grip he had on the paper. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, meticulously ignored as it was, he exalted: that'll teach those upstart trees. The forefront, however, was hard at work re-conjuring some rather explicit— "Things." He blurted hurriedly, overriding the thoughts before they got out of hand.

He peered intently at the nearest set of values, mouth contorting strangely as the numbers swam before his eyes. The account of misplaced-ganders was no better a respite and he at last settled on staring vaguely at his quill, silently imploring his own subconscious to simply stop invoking such, such— enticing—

Something that was most certainly not a broken-off whine broke the lull in DG's chatter.

DG turned a puzzled gaze on him. Her head tilted minutely, conveying inquisitiveness in a rather girlish manner. "You okay? You look, uh, kinda tense."

"Fine, 'm'fine," He affirmed, perhaps a bit too breathlessly, ducking to avoid her scrutiny. Geese, man, think of the geese! "Just… just been sitting too long."

"Oh. Want to go on a walk?" She reached out, grabbing a heavy inkwell, adorned with twining serpents depicted in gold gilt, which had been confiscated from some underling after his original inkwell had shattered while doing some, uh… rearranging. On his desk. With a guest.

He hadn't known the intricacies of geometric design could be so… enthralling. Especially quadrilaterals.

He liked quadrilaterals. They were nice.

The question caught up with his mind, with all the grace and subtlety of a kick to the gut.

"No!" He roared, only to wince when DG jumped, dropping the newest acquisition to her growing pile of random fiddled-with objects. The inkwell promptly rolled off under a nearby table, glinting merrily as it went, lost once more to the ages.

The clock ticked accusingly after his exclamation, punctuating the wide-eyed silence with a pedantic, matronly clucking. "Uhm. No. I'm just… going to finish up… here. Yes."

DG, with a mystified look, nodded. "Alright then. You do that. Sorry I asked." She meandered dazedly to the door, peeking back once over her frothy waves of lace, before disappearing around the door. "Buh-bye, then."

He waited a pensive moment, and then his head clunked forward on to the desk. Good Gods below. He'd been trained.

Half a moment later, however, Cain wondered if, maybe, Glitch was up to another lesson tonight. One must be always ready to learn, after all. About quadrilaterals. And things.

And for once, the dead trees did not protest.