//------------------------------// // A Way With Words // Story: My Little Caboose: Blue is Magic! // by DarkWing //------------------------------// Fluttershy walked in to the main room and looked at the couch where Haley was asleep. She looked at the clock worriedly and went back into the kitchen. She looked at the clock in the kitchen to make sure the one in the living room was the right time. Angel opened the back door and ran up to Fluttershy and tapped on her leg. "Did you find him?" Fluttershy asked. Angel quickly shook his head, before he continued to tap on Fluttershy's leg. "Do you want me to go somewhere?" Angel shook his head once again. He began to smile, before opening his mouth and pointing to it. "Oh, you're hungry. I'm sorry I should have realized." Fluttershy said as she walked up to one of the cupboards. "Are you sure you don't know where Grif is?" Angel shrugged and resumed pointing to his mouth. Fluttershy sighed and reached for her cupboard when Haley suddenly began to bark. "What is it girl?" Fluttershy asked as she ran into the next room. There was a knock on the door. Fluttershy felt a wave of relief pass through her and she trotted up to the door. She opened it with a large smile, but it quickly turned into a frown when she saw the state in which Grif was in. His face had dried blood caked all over it, with a small stream of fresh blood coming out of his nose. His forelegs were in terrible shape, one of them was a bright purple color. "Are you alright?" Fluttershy asked concernedly. "I'm not alright, I'm Grif." Grif said as he began falling. "Grif!" Fluttershy gasped running up to him, catching him before he fell to the ground. "Are you alright? What happened? Where did you-" "Why are there five of you?" Grif wheezed. He took a deep breath, looked up to Fluttershy and opened his mouth to speak, right before slumping over, unconscious. Grif woke up the next morning feeling extremely light headed. He tried lifting his left foreleg, but let out a small whimper when he felt an intense pain shoot through his upper body. "Don't move." Fluttershy said softly. "I'm serious, you're in terrible shape. Your foreleg was almost broken and you lost a lot of blood." "I'm fine." Grif groaned, trying to sit up, but yelled when the intense pain came back tenfold. Fluttershy pushed him back down on the couch and shot him a serious expression. Grif sighed and lifted his left foreleg to examine it. "I'm surprised you're up." Fluttershy said honestly. "Why?" Grif asked as he saw a bandage tightly wrapped around his leg, and the skin under his orange hair was a purple mess. "Oh god, it's worse than I thought! I'm turning into Doc!" Grif turned to Fluttershy with a smile, but there was no hint of humor in her eyes. "What happened to you?" "Nothing really..." "It is not nothing." Fluttershy said firmly. "What happened?" "Not much, just tried to make something go right, only for it to backfire horribly." Grif smiled sickly when he looked at Fluttershy. "You know, the usual." "Please stop cracking jokes. I need to know how this happened." "Tex." "Go on." Fluttershy pressed. "Tex did this to me." Grif said innocently. "Why? From what I've seen, she may be a little rough, but-" "A little violent?" Grif laughed. "Listen, I know that you and the other ponies here try to find good in everyone, but there is no good in Tex." "You didn't let me finish. Tex may be a-" "Complete bitch." "-but something tells me she wouldn't do this for no reason." Fluttershy insisted. "Tell me everything that happened." "After Tex came by to let off some steam, and by that I mean beat me half to death, but I flew up to the clouds and avoided her. And can I just stop right here for a moment and tell you how comfortable clouds are? Jesus Christ, they're the Adonis of the napping world. You wouldn't believe just how damn-" "Grif." Fluttershy said lightly. "Hey, that was the highlight of my week." Grif pouted, but saw Fluttershy giving him a soft look. He rolled his eyes. "Anyways, I napped for a bit, then decided to fly around for a bit." "To get some exercise?" "Hell no, I was trying to see if there were any comfier clouds." Grif snickered. "And yeah, turns out around Ponyville's market place has some really comfy clouds. Well that and it smelled of cookies. Can I just stop the story right here to tell you about how damn delicious-" "Grif." Fluttershy repeated. "Fine dammit. After a while I heard someone talking, and I looked down to see Tex talking to some other chick with weird glasses. Anyways, to make a long story short, Tex was trying to make friends so I followed her." "To help her, right?" Fluttershy asked, though she already knew the answer. "This is my story, okay? So Tex got to the little bar with that other chick then they went inside. I hesitated for a moment, but went in and met up with Tex. I pretended like we were long time friends, which probably gave her a little boost in morale. she probably figured I was trying to help her out." "That was nice of you." "And that's where my plan began." "Plan?" Fluttershy asked. "Yeah, I know she hates being around me, so naturally a latched onto her, pretending I hadn't seen her in a while. Then I bought her a drink, and when she went to drink it I took it away. And then I called her an idiot. You should have seen how she flipped out. It was damn hilarious." Grif smirked, but stopped when he felt another sharp pain in his upper body. "In hindsight, I could have stopped while I was ahead. Got a little ahead of myself. But whatever, after all she's done to me she deserves-" "I think you should apologize." Fluttershy said quietly. "What?" Grif yelped. "Why the fuck should I do that? Look at what she did to me!" "She did it because you provoked her. She wouldn't have done that if you hadn't kept annoying her on purpose." "But what about all the shit she's done to me before this?" Grif asked as he attempted to lift his foreleg, only to grunt in pain. "All the times in the past that she's threatened me, hit me-" "Are just that. The past." Fluttershy said softly. "But she's trying to change, and whether you forgive her or not doesn't matter. She's trying not to be that pony anymore." "Trust me, she can't change." Grif muttered as he rolled over, breaking eye contact. "The least you could do is give her a shot with it before trying to stop her from being happy." "But I don't want to be her friend." "I'm not asking you to be her friend, I'm asking you to let her try to live a different life. Twilight told me quite a bit about Tex's past, like how she fails at almost everything she does. Maybe that even means that she'll fail at trying to get friends. Can you imagine what that must feel like? Not being able to feel success?" "That's not my problem. Maybe she wouldn't fail so much if she wasn't such a bitch. She doesn't deserve an apology." "I'm not telling you to apologize for her. I'm telling you to apologize for you." "For me?" Grif chuckled. "How the hell is bowing down to her going to be good for me?" "It shows that you're willing to give her a chance." Fluttershy said simply. "Please, do it for yourself." Grif sighed and rolled off the couch and gave Fluttershy a look of curiosity. "What's wrong?" "How the fuck do you do it?" "How do I do what?" "I mean, you got Sarge to back the fuck off. That's enough to show me that if there is a god, he has an amazing sense of humor. But trying to get me to apologize to Tex? And actually getting me to even remotely consider it?" "I ask nicely." Fluttershy smiled sweetly. "Sounds like too much work to me." "So will you say sorry?" "I'm not making any promises..." "I'm happy to hear you say that." Fluttershy nodded. "Now, I think you should get some rest." "I was about to suggest the same thing." Grif snorted. Fluttershy gave him a small reassuring smile and walked towards the front door. She reached for the handle, stopped, then looked back at Grif. "You know, it might even make her slightly disappointed that you apologized. She thinks she was in the right for getting back at you like that. She's trying to be nice, so seeing you be nice before she can be nice back might make her dissapointed." "I'll go tomorrow." Grif said before quickly falling asleep.