Fluttershy and Alexander

As Alexander waved goodbye to Fluttershy he made a mental check list for the rest of the day. He had to clean up the mess they had made, had to recheck his medical supplies… and that was it actually.

There were no appointments scheduled for today; there rarely were. The work he did was, thankfully, rarely needed. That suited him fine, because he never really enjoyed the company of other ponies. That was for the best anyway, less chances for them to learn the truth about him. Correction, he never enjoyed the company of most ponies, but Fluttershy could visit all she wanted as far as he was concerned.

Before he started his tasks, he thought about making some of that breakfast he had offered to his love, but decided against it. He didn’t need to eat anyway, he just thought it would have been an enjoyable way to spend time with her, and to keep up his cooking skills.

He walked back upstairs to the living quarters of his clinic, all of the medical and therapy equipment was downstairs for easy access, which left this floor for him to take care of himself and the occasional guest. Honestly, he almost never had guests, but it was nice to have just in case.

Thinking of guests, the guest room he and Fluttershy used was his first stop. Suffice to say, it needed some work. For that matter, so did the hall outside of it, but might as well start at the source and work outward, he thought.

The bed was an absolute mess. He tore all the bedding off it and hauled it to the laundry room. Next, he scrubbed the bed frame and floor as best he could. Moving out into the hall he had to scrub away the trail they had left this morning.

He wondered for a moment if all this mess was worth it… yes, yes it was. For Fluttershy, a whole lot of things would be worth it. A strange thought to him. He had never gotten so hung up on somepony before, maybe, maybe he could even tell her the truth? “Ha! Not likely,” he said aloud. He would think about that later; he had work to do now.

He finished up the cleaning and moved on to double checking his supplies. It took about an hour or so to make sure everything was accounted for and in its proper place, but with that done he could finally get properly dressed.

He put on one of his vests and ties and retrieved his mirrored circular glasses from the guest room. Then, everything set and done, he sat himself behind the welcome desk on the first floor…

Now what? he thought. He could just sit there, shut his body part-way down and wait for something to happen. It would not be the first time he had done that, but he was a little too energetic right now. He wanted to do something.

“Hmm…” I don’t have any appointments to attend to. I could go work on something downstairs. Haven’t done that in a while.

His new course of action decided, he got up from his position at the welcome desk and made his way back to the most secluded corner of his clinic.

There was a wall here, it looked like any other in this part of the large house/clinic. White and sterile, just like the rest. Which is why it would have been so shocking if anypony ever saw Alexander reach out a forehoof to the wall, and a moment later, saw that wall fall away into the floor.

With the wall seemingly absorbed right down into the ground, there was now an opening large enough for a pony to step through into the darkness beyond, which is exactly what Alexander did, the missing wall rising up behind him to seal the opening.

In the darkness Alexander could feel the familiar ground beneath his hooves, and through the ground, the walls, the ceiling, and all the way down into his private basement, if you could even call this a basement…

Alexander willed the darkness away, or rather, he willed the lights spaced across the walls to light up. They looked like bulbs of bioluminescence imbedded, or growing, in the walls. Their light was soft, and if not for the environment they illuminated, would have been quite inviting.

Graying bone. The walls and floor and everything looked like it was made from a grayish almost metallic bone, like the shell of a great armored beast had been turned inside-out and made into a passageway into the earth. You could even feel a strange rhythmic pulsing through the entire passage if you tried.

It was anything but inviting. To a normal pony, at least.

Alexander walked down the stairway into the ground for a bit until he came out into the massive rectangular room that was under his home. There was nothing here but the walls and two huge support columns spaced out in the middle of the room. Oddly those columns looked less like standard pillars and more like actual spinal columns, curved shape and all. But they seemed to be doing the job they were made for.

Alexander kept moving, making his way to the center of what would be one of the back walls. When he reached his destination, he turned his back to the wall, stood up, and leaned back as if to sit in a chair. As he did a chair formed out of the ground itself and rose up to meet him, lifting him off his hind legs. At the same time a rectangular chunk of the floor in front of him lifted up and formed itself into a desk, which slid toward him once he was in the chair.

Now properly seated at his new desk, Alexander looked like a CEO in a particularly fucked-up part of Tartarus. Alexander himself didn’t mind the place though, in fact, he was quite relaxed here. And for good reason; he made the place after all, or would grew the place be the proper statement to use?

So now that he was here and settled in, what to do? There was so much to think about, so much had happened that Alexander was having trouble organizing his thoughts.

Well, serious business first I suppose. He held one of his forelegs over the desk. With a mental command one of the veins in that leg ripped itself free and purposefully sprayed some blood onto the desk before reknitting itself back into his leg. There was no wound left, not even a sign of blood.

As for the blood on the desk... If it had been normal blood it would have spread out and started coagulating. It wasn’t normal blood; Alexander was fairly sure no part of him was normal any more. Instead, the blood pulled itself together and formed a ball that somehow held its shape.

This actually bothered Alexander somewhat, and had been bothering him for a while now. He couldn’t tell if his body was gaining a form of sentience of its own, right down to his very blood, or if he was subconsciously influencing his own body, even when he didn’t mean to.

He ordered the blood to move. The blood broke from its ball-like shape and slithered from one end of the desk to the other, just as instructed.

In some ways it made sense. He didn’t want to waste the blood, so maybe it was just going off of that desire? Still, even if it dried out he could still reabsorb it, it wouldn’t make that much of a difference. So why was his body, or parts of it, seemingly functioning of their own accord without his direct command?

“Eh, no point in getting so worked up over it,” he said as he had the blood absorbed into the surface of the desk. “Still, I wish I knew what this meant.”

“Does this happen to everypony like me?” he mused. Ha! Everypony like me, he mocked his own word choice. As far as he knew there wasn’t anypony like him, not anymore.

Flesh-sculptors, that’s what they had called themselves. Or at least, that’s what the fragmented memories that would flash through his head said they called themselves.

The memories, that was a whole other problem all its own. For one, they weren’t his, of that he was certain. He had been born a normal Earth pony. This stuff with flesh crafting or shaping or sculpting or whatever it was didn’t start until he got his cutie mark. Since then he would keep getting these memories stuck in his head of things that had never happened to him. It was maddening when he was a colt. He thought he was going insane…

But that wasn’t the case. As Alexander got older and more comfortable with his… talent, he started to piece together these memories. There was meaning to them. They weren’t trying to tell him anything or something like that, not directly, but there was knowledge to be gained from understanding them. And what they told him, well, it wasn’t the prettiest picture, that was for sure.

The group of ponies that had developed this ability, they were not the nicest bunch around. In fact, Alexander was quite sure they were, or had become, outright villains by the end. You can’t do the kinds of things they had done in pursuit of this power and not be considered a villain, or worse…

Which was why Alexander was down here, in a hidden basement under a house at the edge of Ponyville. This way he could practice his talent and improve his body without anypony knowing, because Alexander was pretty sure nopony would take finding out what he could do very well. As a matter of fact, if the memories of what happened to the original users of this ability were true, then anypony finding out about him would likely result in the two sisters showing up on his doorstep and trying to banish him, turn him to stone, or worse.

Alexander decided to take a reprieve from that line of thought, removed his glasses, and promptly let his head fall face first into the desk with a nice resounding thud…

It really isn’t fair you know; this ability is useful, he thought. He knew he was right. Part of the reason he was such a good doctor was because of this talent of his. He could see and feel everything that was wrong with somepony if he was close enough, which made treatment so much more efficient. For Tartarus’ sake, he could even reattach limbs with ease if he could just use this power openly…

Alexander swung his head back up off the desk. “Enough! I came down here to do something! Not just overthink the same damn thing again!” he shouted at the walls. He was getting frustrated and needed to move on to a better subject.

Fluttershy. Now that was a better subject. Alexander put his glasses back on as he began to think. He was glad he had taken the chance with her that he did. He had always been a loner, so the idea of pursuing a mare was silly to him, but something about her had compelled him to do it anyway. He still hadn’t figured out what actually, now that he thought about. Hmm, that seemed like an interesting line of thought to go down.

With a thought, the desk in front of Alexander reformed into a pottery stand, the rest of it falling away into the floor. From the center of the stand, what looked like raw, red flesh bubbled up, forming into a solid chunk on top of the stand.

Alexander reached out with his forelegs and started molding the flesh like clay with his hooves. He could just touch it and think it into the shape he wanted, but it felt somehow relaxing to go back to basics, to back before he got better at his talent. Thus, he molded the flesh by hoof while he thought.

Where to start? It had taken so long for Fluttershy to open up to him, but wow, was it worth it. If yesterday and this morning were how they were going to start the next step in their relationship then it had been worth it and then some.

Alexander could still remember that first date, if you could even call it that. They were both quiet by nature, her even more so than him. So, they had barely said a word to each other the entire time, but he hadn’t minded it. He knew she was shy, right there in the name after all. But he had stuck with it, took her on more quiet dates, helped her with her animals, showed her around the clinic. He had never pushed her too hard, he had just waited till she got used to him, and eventually, she had started talking to him.

That’s when things really got started. Now that they could talk to each other, they finally got to know more about each other. They slowly learned each other’s likes and dislikes, he found out how much she loved and cared for her animals, and she found out he liked to cook as a hobby. That last part was useful; he got to spend more time with her and try out new recipes, and she would even bring him new ones to try from time to time. Fluttershy even told him about some of her adventures, and Alexander told her about his work. Honestly, her stories put what he could tell her to shame. How could one pegasus and her friends get into so many crazy adventures?

He was just some loner Earth pony that lived at the edge of town. He was lucky. He had to be. He looked good and could cook, so what? He couldn’t imagine that she couldn’t find better somewhere if she had actually tried, but he guessed that he was the first stallion to actually try approaching her. So he was lucky, that had to be it as far as he was concerned. It’s not like he could tell her about his actual talent, about what he could really do…

It was done, in the midst of his thoughts he had finished his little sculpture. He pulled his hooves back so he could get a good look at it, or rather, her. It was a tiny version of Fluttershy. She was sitting down with her eyes closed, her forehooves held together, and her wings open. She looked like an angel praying.

It was beautiful. Alexander held out a hoof to lift the sculpture’s head by the chin. Its head lifted with ease, and even held up by itself. Alexander had gone as far as giving his creation tiny bones so it could hold its form better. It really was a tiny marvel… but it wasn’t the same. It lacked the warmth and charm of the real thing. The kindness and inner strength the true Fluttershy had… was that it? Was that what was so special about her? Alexander didn’t know for sure, and would probably never figure it out. But that was fine. He could keep trying to find out, as long as she would let him be with her.

As for the fake Fluttershy before him… Alexander sighed and tapped it with his hoof, causing it to melt back into the raw flesh it had been and sink back into the stand, which itself sunk back into the floor.

Alexander leaned back in his chair and stared at the high ceiling. “I really need to get out more…”