A/N Not sure if anyone's picked up on this, but it'll continue to follow TV order.
Gordon was pulling the express one day and was near the tunnel where I was behind that brick wall and lonely. I could hear him. "Oh dear,", I thought. "Why did I worry about rain spoiling my lovely coat of paint? I'd like to come out of the tunnel.' But I was too tired and weak to know how to ask.
I heard Gordon say he was going to poop, poop at me. Then, I heard him Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeshhhhhh and he stopped after that, unable to pull his train because he burst his safety valve. I just laughed from behind my wall and he noticed me laughing at him. People came to see Gordon. I heard Sir Topham Hatt humphing about us big engines.
Edward came to push the train, but he was too weak to move all those heavy coaches.
"I told you so", I heard Gordon say. "Why not let Henry try?" In that moment, I decided in my mechanical heart, even though I so recently laughed at him, he was my friend.
"Yes", said Sir Topham Hatt. "I will." "Will you help pull this train, Henry?" he asked me.
"Oh yes", I said. I was almost too weak to talk, so he had to be right by me to hear.
For the first time since my fire went out in the tunnel, they built a fire in my firebox after giving me a drink from a mobile water tank. All my water had either evaporated or been cried out while I was in the tunnel. When I got up to steam, I puffed out. My paint was all dirty and cobwebbed. "Ooh, I'm stiff, I'm stiff," I groaned. Lack of movement for so long really affected me.
"Have a run to ease your joints, and find a turntable, said Sir Topham Hatt.
I did and came back feeling much better. Then, I was coupled and ready to pull that train with Edward pushing.
"Peep, peep," said Edward. "I'm ready.", to let me know we could go whenever I was ready.
"Peep, peep, peep," I said back. "So am I," to say we could be off.
"Pull hard. We'll do it." "Pull hard. We'll do it," we both puffed as we set out.
"We've done it together." We've done it together," we said, going along the railway.
"You've done it, hurray! You've done it, hurray!", sang our coaches.
The passengers were excited, including Sir Topham Hatt who leaned out a window to wave at us, but we were going so fast his hat blew into a field and it became a goat's tea.
We stopped at the station at the end of the line.
"Thank you, said our passengers and Sir Topham Hatt told me I could have a new coat of paint due to how dirty my paint was from that tunnel.
We shunted Gordon back to the shed.
Now, Gordon and Edward are my friends. All thee of us are great friends.
I no longer mind the rain because I know how to keep my paint nice, ask my driver for a rubdown when the work day's over. Running into a tunnel did more to my paint than the rain getting it wet would do.
A/N The mechanical heart thing comes from steamers seeming to have a heartbeat. I've read mechanical heart in TTTE fics before, but after reading that comment from another site alluded to above, I decided to include it. For TTTE ones, it's a sort of fluttering, the heartbeat, from their firebox area, which is an analogue of the heart. I read a fic in which Henry's distaff counterpart cried all her water out, which inspired my line in this chapter about why Henry needed water after being allowed out and how he was given his drink.