//------------------------------// // Feelings // Story: My Little Caboose: Blue is Magic! // by DarkWing //------------------------------// Twilight sat near the door as Pinkie tried getting Tex to become more friendly, but finding it to be more difficult than she had thought. She spent hours cracking jokes and telling her stories, but Tex remained unchanged. Pinkie gasped and hopped up the stairs to get her something, which was when Church walked up to Tex and began talking to her. Caboose noticed her out of the corner of his eye and hopped up to her. "What are you doing sitting all the way over here?" Caboose asked with a smile. "The cake is on the other side of the room." "I don't feel like cake right now." Twilight said. "I don't feel like cake either, but that isn't stopping me." Caboose said, poking himself in the side. Twilight laughed at that, but that laughter quickly died out when Church began walking towards her. "Hello Church!" Caboose greeted wildly. "Hey Caboose." Church muttered, nodding at Twilight. "Ready to go?" "What about Tex?" Twilight asked. "She's being difficult, as usual." Church smirked. "She said she'll come back in her own time." "Alright." Twilight said, quickly getting to her hooves. "But what about cake?" Caboose pouted. "Maybe next time." Twilight promised. "Tell Pinkie thanks, okay?" "Okay." Caboose nodded. Twilight and Church opened the door and began walking back to the library. They said nothing on their trip back, Church's mind still wondering how Equestria will fare with the AIs running loose in it, while Twilight's mind was thinking about Church. "I wonder if Spike's asleep yet." Church said once they neared the library. "Maybe." Twilight nodded. She reached for the door, but Church stopped her. "What's wrong?" "You're going to tell me what's wrong with you now." "What do you mean?" "I mean how you kept staring at Tex and I while we were at Pinkie's." "Oh that's-" "It's not nothing Twilight. I can tell." Church said firmly, but with no force. "I want to help." "I know, it's just hard finding the right words." Twilight said, before walking away from the door to look up at the moon. "You can't find the right words if you don't try." "I guess you're right." Twilight said, taking a seat on the grass. "You know you can tell me anything, right?" "I think I love you." Twilight said abruptly, feeling a great weight being lifted off of her. She turned to Church, who had a near unreadable expression on his face. "Do you have any idea how stupid that fucking is?" Church asked sincerely. "What?" Twilight asked dejectedly. "I thought you were a lot smarter than that. Why do you think you feel that way?" "It's just that the others..." "The others? From what I've seen, the Reds are just hanging out with the others, which is surprising enough in itself. Caboose attaches to things easily. He fell in love with a tank and his email for fucks sake. And Tucker will try to get with anything that has an arm or a hole." Church muttered, then thought for a brief moment. "Actually, it doesn't even need to have an arm or a hole. As long as it has something for him to rub up against he'll spend time with it." Twilight broke eye contact and looked at the grass, feeling ashamed. "Wait, is that why you're in love with me?" Church asked seriously. "Because the others are doing it?" "No, I'm doing it because you're the only one who believed in me." Twilight snapped, tears now streaming out of her eyes. "When everypony turned their backs on me, you stayed with me. I just felt..." "Felt what?" "Felt that I could depend on you, no matter what happened." Twilight said softly. "Maybe I felt that since you tried so hard to prevent me from being hurt, that I should try to do the same. Tex isn't the right one for you. I'm not saying that I am either, but the way she treats you..." "Twilight, you know I can't do anything about it. I was programmed to love Tex, there is no way I can break free of that." Church said, placing his hoof on the back of her neck comfortingly. "Besies, I'm not even real. That should be reason enough for you to find someone else." "How dare you say that!" Twilight snapped, causing Church to jump backwards. "What did I say?" "You are real Church. You may not see it that way, but you are." "I was fabricated in a fucking lab. Actually, no, the Alpha was created in a lab, I was created when the thing in the lab went crazy." "And? You feel betrayal. You feel regret. You feel sadness." Twilight said, voice cracking. "Those feelings can't be replicated or created. Those are things you earn from experience and pain. And that pain is what tells me you're real." Church opened his mouth to argue, but found it difficult to find the right words. "When Caboose died, you even went as far as wanting Celestia to take your life." Twilight continued quietly, voice growing weaker. "You felt responsible for his death, and you wanted to set it right, and when you couldn't you felt anger towards me from stopping her." "It's a lot more complicated than that." Church grunted. "Is it though? What else needs to be shown to you to prove to you that you're real? You've been eating and sleeping, that shows that your body has needs as well. You might have been Epsilon where you came from, but in here you're Church. In here you're real." Twilight said, letting out a deep breath, before sniffling lightly. "You're real to me" Church then did something that Twilight had not expected. He threw his forelegs around her and hugged her. Twilight gasped inaudibly and a crimson blush spread across her cheeks, before hugging him back. After a few seconds, Church coughed awkwardly and pulled his forelegs off of her. "Church, I understand that you can't love me." Twilight said painfully as Church looked at the ground. "I'm willing to accept that and I will try to move on." "Thanks." Church sighed deeply. He turned to her and met her eyes. "Friends?" "Friends." Twilight nodded, smiling tightly. "I guess I should be happy that I have somepony I can depend on." Church said, getting off the grass. He walked to the door and stopped, then looked back to Twilight. "For what it's worth, I choose to trust you and I choose to respect you. That's a lot more than I've been able to give others." "I'm glad." Twilight said hesitantly. Church and Twilight's eyes met one last time, and they found a strange comfort in each other. One that was less than a lovers comfort, but more than just friends. Church then broke the eye contact and went inside. Twilight stayed outside for a few more minutes to look at the stars, when a cough came from behind her. She turned around expecting Church, but instead saw Tex. "Hi." Tex grunted. "Hi." Twilight repeated. "How's your ankle?" "Pretty good." Tex said, rolling her hoof around to show how limbr her ankle was. "I still managed to kick those chumps asses without breaking a sweat." "How much did you hear?" Twilight asked meekly. "Pretty much all of it." Tex laughed, but it was not forced. She looked at the ground awkwardly and sat next to Twilight. "So you really do like him, huh?" "I guess so. But if he was meant to be with you, then he was meant to be with you. There's nothing I could, or would, do to get in between that." "Mhm." Tex murmured. "Do you know why I act the way I do?" "Because you don't want to love Church because you want to live how you want, with your own freewill?" "Freewill is a part of it." Tex grunted, trying to think of a way of explaining it. "It may come as a surprise to you, but I don't act this way for myself. I act this way for him." "You're mean to him... for him?" "Hey, I love him too. Shouldn't be surprising that I do things for him too." "You have an odd way of showing it." Twilight commented. "Yeah. I guess I do." Tex agreed, getting off the grass to go back inside. "It's hard to explain why, but maybe you'll find out why I am this way someday. And then it won't seem so odd." And with that, Tex walked into the library, leaving Twilight to solve the riddle Tex had just given her.