Morgue

Modern AU.  Welcome to an entirely new variety of creepy.  I haven't created a "mortal" name for Aegnor yet, so he is not referred to by a name at all in the story.  Just assume he has one.  Also, reappearance of our newest OFC friend Sarah.  Hope you don't mind.  And look, plot is being born!  Isn't that just disturbing?  This is a continuation (and not of the funny variety) of "Machine".  Takes place in modern day somewhere.

PS: I know nothing about morgues.  All of this was cooked up in my sleep-deprived brain, so forgive any inaccuracies in supposed realism.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion, but some of this shit is definitely mine

Pairings: past Aegnor x Andreth

Characters: Aegnor, Sarah (mentions Andreth and other random humans)

Warning: non-canon compliant, OFC warning, canon character death, obsessive behaviors/OCD, obsession with death/dead people, suicidal thoughts, rather disturbing and ambiguous content

Song: Imitation Black

Words: 1,438
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morgue (noun): a place where the bodies of dead persons are kept temporarily pending identification or release for burial or autopsy
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/morgue

Why he was allowing this foolishness, Aegnor could not have said.

It wasn't love or friendship.  It wasn't even affection.

Maybe it was loneliness or boredom that urged him to once more entangle himself into the realm of mortality after thousands of years of floating in its midst like a ghost.  Millennia spent glancing at each face knowing he would never see it a second time, because it belonged to a mortal man or woman, humans who would pass beyond the edges of the world in but a handful of years.  Beyond his sight and beyond his reach.

Truly, he envied them.  Dying once had given him no rest.  No cadence to the harmony of suffering.

He learned not to involve himself with mortals.  Not to get attached.  Not to reach out and touch their lives.  Never to allow himself to love them, for they were fleeting blooms, dying upon the first frost of winter never to be resurrected. Dead.

And yet there was that woman.  That annoying, infuriating, stubborn to pigheadedness woman who would not leave him alone.

"Would it kill you to have friends?"

She had no idea.

"So, this is where you work."

Both disgusted and confused did she sound as she took in the sight laid bare before her gaze.  Admittedly, the corner building was small and nondescript, rather dreary and disconsolate with its gray walls and lack of windows.  But then, few had reason to be cheery in a building full of corpses.

It was a morgue, after all.

"You said you wanted to know," he grumbled.

"I was expecting... Well, I wasn't expecting this."  Her hands flailed toward the door and the neat, bland sign above. "I thought, you know, that you would be an athletic trainer or lifeguard or something!  But you actually... you actually work in a building that keeps tabs on dead bodies?"

Of course she would find it unsettling.  Even more so if she knew that he enjoyed it.

"Are you going to come inside or not?"

Most humans were uncomfortable at the thought of spending time around rotting corpses in a dim room smelling heavily of formaldehyde and bodily fluids.  Sarah was no different.  Inside, she crept upon tiptoe as if any sound might wake the dead hiding--at least to her vivid imagination--behind every door and corner they passed as they traversed the short hallways, heading back toward the offices.

Bypassing the room where the dead were kept, each locked away in their own cabinet awaiting a trip to the examination table or their final journey to their resting places for all eternity.  The itch to go inside was nearly overwhelming, nearly causing Aegnor's sure steps to falter.

But he resisted.  Led his companion instead to his small cube-like office packed tightly in the back of the building.  Bare and militarized with only the necessities--pens, a stapler, a computer and a locked desk drawer.  Not a paper loose.  Not an object out of place.  It sat before him so beautifully, the image of an office that belonged to no one.  The image of an office that had never even been occupied.

"Do you always keep everything so... clean?" The word came out lilted, as if she had meant to say something stronger and ruder.  Aegnor would not have minded.

If she had seen the inside of his apartment, she probably would have accused him of being a machine.

"Some people do not enjoy wallowing in their own messes," he commented instead of telling her exactly why he meticulously rearranged "his" belongings in such a strange manner. "It is perfectly normal for humans to develop personal routines."

"This isn't routine.  This is creepy."  Her fingers ran over the tiny window's sill and across the tops of the file cabinets as if searching for dust.  But she would find none; he had dusted just yesterday evening. "Normal people don't sterilize their offices.  Isn't this a bit excessive?"

When one was as obsessed with death as he, nothing was beyond the scope of soothing the burning ache.  Working in a morgue to be close to still bodies.  Cleaning every surface to the point of spotlessness to remove prints and oils.  Carefully arranging each room so that no sign of an occupant remained behind when he walked away and turned out the lights.

Staring off into space and ignoring the world, eating and drinking only as a function of necessity.  Avoiding all human interaction--after all, who talked to dead men?--and locking himself away in this fortress of cadavers and chemicals.

Caressing almost lovingly the gray, slack faces.  Running his fingers over chests that no longer rose and fell.  Checking for a pulse that would never pound again.

Envy and fascination.  Longing and bitterness.  Agonizing wistfulness.

Definitely obsession.

After all, who but an obsessed man lived his life in a morgue full of dead memories and dead dreams, wishing he could curl up like these lucky corpses and rot away?  Wishing he could pass to where they passed...

To where she--

But no mortal could understand this. "Well, is your curiosity satisfied?" he asked quietly.

"I guess..." Her hands fell to her sides and her eyes narrowed.  They searched over all the surfaces, across the hardwood desk and the file cabinets arranged side-by-side in a row.  Staring briefly at the chair straightened at a perfect ninety-degree angle to face the blank computer screen where it sat perfectly at the center of the desktop.  He measured it every day just to be certain of its accuracy and precision.

And then her eyes roved back to him. "But why here?  Isn't there anything else you want to do?"

No.

"I like my job."

"Hanging out with dead guys."

"If you wish to put it so tastelessly, then yes.  I enjoy the company of the dead."

It is the closest I will ever get to becoming one of them.  After all, a bullet or a knife or a cup of poison would only send me to the Halls of the Waiting.  To rebirth.  To suffering and loneliness and gray.  Such is the blessing and curse of being of the Firstborn.  Of Eä wholly and completely.

He just wanted to see her again.  To reach out and touch her face.

To feel her hair run through his fingers and watch her dark brows crinkle with warmth and laughter.  To trace against her white skin with his fingertips and brush her eyes closed with the pads of each digit, soothing away her worries.

To hold her again against him... forever...

"Are you... I mean... Are you okay?"

Aegnor had not even noticed how he stared blankly at the far wall.  How long had he been staring, thinking about her?

Again and again and again...

"Fine," he snapped, crossing his arms.  Not bothering to explain.  "Let us depart."

For no mortal, even this strangely accepting and naturally curious creature pestering him incessantly, could understand how he felt.  The Secondborn feared death, ran from it in terror and fought against its iron grip to their very last drop of blood and very last gulp of air, clawing and thrashing and screaming for freedom.  For what they perceived as a gift more tempting, more succulent.

They did not understand the greatness of the gift that they had been given.  The gift he so very much coveted and desired.

But would never possess.  No matter how much he might pretend.

Aegnor did not desire to be alive.

And yet the very source of all his suffering--attachment to a person dying slowly each day and hour and minute, who might be killed in an accident this very day or die abed in eighty years--stood beside him.  Affirming that he breathed sweet air every moment.  Reminding that he could still reach out and touch the living.  Cruelly reiterating that he was not dead.

Why he allowed himself to even speak with her, he could scarcely understand.

Maybe it was purely mutual curiosity that allowed him to tolerate her presence.  Or maybe it was the need to drive her away through strangeness or fear of his senility.  To garner the final affirmation from the one person who had noticed his existence amongst the tangle of individual lives flooding the streets of the city.

After all, who could possibly love a dead man walking?

Scoffing, he led her away.

This foolishness would not last long.  In the end, she would be just the same as the rest.