Note From The Author-- Very short, very fluffy, but I couldn't help myself. Enjoy!
Disclaimer-- I don't own the characters of Tin Man
In the few months he had known her Wyatt Cain had learned a lot about DG, and that was pretty much the only reason he didn't sound the alarm when she slipped her guard when they went back to Finoqua. Truth be told, he had actually expected her to try something like this the second he dared to turn his back. So when the hear guard he'd assigned to her that morning had very quietly informed him that the princess was missing he'd been far from panicked.
"I'll take care of it," he told the man. "Don't alarm the Queen."
"Yes sir."
He had a pretty good idea of where she had gone, so Cain surreptitiously slid away from Glitch and Raw and went after her. Sure enough he found her on the swing, swaying idly back and forth. It was quite a picture she made too. He'd gotten so accustomed to seeing her in that leather jacket and little blue t-shirt that the dresses her mother had steered her towards had thrown him at first. They had both gotten used to the dresses, but there were still times when they both missed the jacket and sneakers.
"You know it's dangerous to slip your guard that way," Cain told her.
She turned with a small smile. "Nobody's going to come after me out here."
He shook his head. "You don't know that DG. You're a princess, you're always a target."
"Everyone's after Az, not me."
Cain walked around to stand in front of her. "What's going on princess?"
DG sighed. "I feel like the O.Z is really where I belong, but nothing's working the way I thought I would."
"What do you mean?" he questioned.
"I thought after I saved Az and my parents finally got to be together again that everything would just fall into place but exactly the opposite happened. Az lived with the witch for so long that she doesn't know what to do with herself. She's unhappy and she doesn't know how to interact with people even though she desperately wants to. My mother and father have been apart for so many years and it's so hard to watch them struggle to find their rhythm again. Raw is talking about leaving; Glitch has changed so much since they gave him his brain back and you…"
He looked at her curiously. "And I what, DG?"
Her eyes met his in a clash of blue. "I wonder if you'll ever move past thinking of me as a child."
Feeling slightly out of his element, he moved back around behind her to send her swinging again with a gentle push. "I've got something like twenty annuals on you kid."
"You'd think after I saved the world people would get over it," she muttered irritably.
Cain kept her swinging. "I may have started calling you kid thinking you were a child, but I just call you that now because it stuck."
Her breath huffed out in a rather ungraceful manner. "It's aggravating."
"DG." On her next backswing he took a firm hold on the ropes to pull her to a stop. She looked back at him in confusion. Shaking his head, he bent and pressed a soft kiss to her mouth. He pulled back and looked her straight in the eye. "For the record, I don't think of you as a child."
Completely speechless, she nodded, turning around to try and find her feet. "Okay."
Holding back laughter Cain sent her swinging again. If he'd known how entertaining it would be he would have told her a long time ago. But damned if he'd be able to stop calling her kid.