Rematch by I_did_not_mean_to

---

Red Hair-ings

This is the last chapter. The prompt used is "Red Herrings".

It's a slightly longer chapter with references to trauma, mental health problems, and a slightly creepy Maglor.

Lots of love from me!

---

Bright and early, Aredhel and Haleth set out, once again, for the sprawling mansion on top of the steep hill—their motivation was high, but their hopes were not after the fiasco of the previous evening.

“We’ll have to ascertain where Maedhros has been,” Haleth said decisively even though she was highly doubtful that the taciturn oldest son and heir apparent would share such an intimate detail of his life with mere mortals such as they were.

Aredhel scoffed in disbelief as she flicked a finger against the meticulously straightened and styled hair of her colleague—usually, Haleth threw her shoulder-length hair up into a more or less tidy bun, but today, she had apparently found it necessary to make an effort.

“He’s still got that power, huh?” Aredhel mocked, pointedly ignoring the fact that she was also wearing her best black pantsuit as if she was going to a formal funeral rather than to a preliminary interrogation.

Cheap paper cups were rolled and squeezed nervously between sweaty palms as they walked up to the house which looked surprisingly like a huge, many-eyed beast, coiled and ready to spring upon them unexpectedly.

“Have you ever been here before? Inside, I mean?” Aredhel asked, resenting the fact that she couldn’t stop babbling as if the weighty silence surrounding the bizarre structure—transformed, expanded, and renovated once too often—was too heavy to bear.

“No,” Haleth replied between two tiny, nervous sips of her coffee. “I’ve met the man in the wilderness, so to say—I’ve inadvertently stumbled into his usual hunting grounds. We’ve never made it to the point where he’d invite me to his hereditary estate.”

“Do you know the others?”

Crushing the by-now empty container between her twitching fingers, Haleth shrugged half-heartedly. “I know of them,” she said vaguely. “I’d want to say ‘as a woman’, but let me amend, as a living, breathing, seeing person, I am aware of them…but no, I’ve never been formally introduced. You?”

“Our mothers were friends,” Aredhel mumbled without taking her eyes off the house as they crept towards it warily. “I have not been here in many years though. Brace yourself then—they are strange.”

Her hand trembled just the tiniest bit as she raised it to let her fist fall against the heavy oaken door—before she could knock though, the door swung open, and a beautifully melancholic smile appeared.

“Come in,” Maglor greeted, “I suppose my brothers are still braiding their hair to look their best, grief does not prevent vanity.”

Haleth’s brow knitted in confusion; he had a disconcerting, almost frightening intensity and so, she studied the oversized portraits of the sons of the house instead to escape that terrible gaze that seemed to look right into her quailing soul.

“Káno,” a sober, forbidding voice resounded, “watch your mouth.”

Shooting an alarmed look at her boss, Haleth retreated a few hasty steps.

“You can cut out the threatening posturing,” Aredhel hissed as she realised that they had been kept in the foyer for much longer than she had planned on being detained. “We’ve understood that you’ll defend and protect your younger brothers. I’ve got a big brother as well, I know the drill.”

A commotion upstairs nipped every chance of a prolonged staring contest between Aredhel and the two oldest brothers in the bud.

“What happened to my window then?” The thundering, rich voice exploding like a storm seemed to shake the very walls around them. “I’ll have to replace it! This is not safe!”

“Father, please, there’s a detective downstairs. Keep your voice down!”

“Has he come to investigate who locked us in our own house or where my prototype has vanished to?”

“It’s Írissë, dad, come on…I’ll replace the window later, don’t worry!”

Again, Haleth sought Aredhel’s eyes for reassurance. They all seemed so uncannily composed that it made her feel as if she was sleepwalking through an endless, nightmarish maze of half-truths and expertly obscured secret agendas. Everything but the death of the boy seemed of immense urgency, and she could not even begin to understand why not one of them seemed to be grieving.

“He is not mad,” Maglor declared in a tone that made it very clear that his father was, as a matter of fact, beyond common folly. Fëanor reigned the twilight space where genius and insanity collided to create or annihilate galaxies. “The window was a special invention of his—it was easily breakable from the inside—in case of a spill or if the need for a speedy exit was to arise—but it was almost impenetrable from the outside. He is paranoid and possessive when it comes to his ideas, you must understand!”

Neither Aredhel nor Haleth could truly comprehend how the man could be so upset about a mere pane of glass, no matter how exceptional, when his child lay dead on a slab in the morgue. “What is this about your keys? And what exactly has been lost?” Aredhel pushed on for fear that she would drown in the quagmire of her own doubtful thoughts and base suspicions otherwise.

“That has nothing to do with Amrod,” Caranthir’s cold voice cut unexpectedly through her urgent questions. “Except for the fact that—for a lack of keys—we were all right here.”

“Not all,” Haleth rasped as she whirled around to face him, eager to see his face and terrified at the same time. “As we’ve found your brother downtown.”

He stopped in the middle of the stairs he was coming down at a stately, leisurely pace—his eyes were hard and unreadable, and his mouth tightened into an unforgiving line of stark disapproval.

The tension crackling in the air threatened to provoke an unwelcome reprise of the spontaneous combustion that would claim another slew of unsuspecting victims.

“We’ve heard there was a raucous party,” Aredhel dove into the breach Haleth’s tactlessness had hewn into the stalwart defences of the inhabitants of this eerie house. “Maybe…there was even a fight?”

“Father is working on an alternative energy source,” Maedhros explained evasively, “but it’s not going all that well so he’s irritable these days. Nothing out of the ordinary.” He did not deny the suggestion of a quarrel, but he also did not gratify their attempt at worming their way into his head with an affirmative statement or admission of something being amiss.

“And some jokester had locked all the doors late at night,” Celegorm added tempestuously as he pushed past Caranthir and strode down the stairs with all the flair of an Old Hollywood Diva. “We were here when…” He didn’t finish his sentence—he couldn’t.

“So you all keep saying,” Aredhel groaned. “And Haleth here is right—very evidently, not everyone was in the house at all times.”

“We were locked in the night before yesterday and only managed to find the keys one by one throughout the day,” Caranthir specified calmly. “We do not know what happened.”

“What about the window then?” Haleth interjected, throwing back her head defiantly.

“It has nothing to do with anything,” Maglor said a little too quickly with an unnaturally bright smile that might have fooled less suspicious minds than those present. “It was an unfortunate accident.”

Aredhel shook her head; if what they said was true and they had been confined against their will, the fact that someone had indeed forced their way outside was eminently relevant. She could not understand why they all insisted on being so contrary—did they not yearn to be cleared?

“I’d also want to know what happened to the window,” Fëanor’s tired voice resounded from above.

“Father,” another voice pleaded and then retreating steps echoed through the hall as someone—presumably Curufin—led the patriarch into relative seclusion.

With as much objectivity as she could muster, Aredhel took in the scene—it was vital that she be able to observe and judge the assembled people as important witnesses and potential perpetrators rather than old childhood friends. Maedhros looked as if he had not slept in days and the way Caranthir glowered at the ceiling as if his accusatory gaze could penetrate brick and mortar to strike those holed up on the upper floor was indicative of deep-seated conflicts that might well shed a light on what had transpired in the house, leading up to the tragic death of one of the twins.

She remembered them as mere toddlers, rotund and happy, and her heart broke at the thought of the charred, mangled body they had found in a dark, abandoned alley.

Catching sight of the remaining twin, near-catatonic, seated on a sofa that seemed to swallow him, through the open living room door, she quailed at the thought that she would have to interrogate Amras, who had lost half of himself, as well as his vexingly unhelpful brothers.

The walls seemed to be closing in around her, immuring her in the voracious, mute misery of a family she had disclaimed a long time ago.

“This is not going anywhere,” she finally said in a trembling voice, tapping Haleth—engaged in a stubborn staring contest with a statuesque and unnaturally pale Caranthir—on the shoulder. “Let’s examine the rooms and be done with this.”

Aredhel was desperate to get out of the house—to breathe fresh, unsullied air and cleanse herself of the cloying aroma of wordless agony that seemingly clung to her skin and hair; her every movement stirred the turgid current of unspoken resentment and fragrant secrets and she felt as if she was advancing through molasses as she made her way up the stairs.

In a grotesque procession, they proceeded through the different bedrooms, gritting their teeth against the horrible, humiliating sensation of unforgivable intrusion and callous trespass as they stood—detached and professional—in the most intimate sanctum of people who now felt like quasi-strangers.

From time to time, Haleth let slip a tiny groan of dismay or a choked gasp of shock at the sight of a heap of nails on Maglor’s nightstand or the empty spaces in Caranthir’s gem collection.

She, who had never really met the seven notorious scions of a noble house, was aghast to have to watch on powerlessly as they dug their own graves.

Burying themselves in their personal flaws—pride, stubbornness, and a categorical refusal to admit to any kind of weakness—they seemed all too eager to ruin any chance of redemption the women’s goodwill might have procured them.

They did not speak to one another or indulge in comforting touches, but they stood side-by-side like gruesome, impassible, mute sentinels as Aredhel and Haleth executed their duties with heavy hearts and sorrow-laden minds.

If one of them was guilty, Aredhel knew, they probably all were. It was a well-established truth that—fight and squabble as they might—the boys were fiercely loyal to one another and would rather go down gloriously together than make it out alive on their own.

“Do you care to explain?”

Silence. Final. Unyielding.

“Didn’t think so,” Aredhel muttered and went back downstairs, eager to get to that boarded-up window in hopes that the forbidden room would give her any new insight that might seal their fate or—which was much more desirable—would exempt them miraculously.

“You can’t go in there,” Fëanor, wild-eyed and unkempt, sprang out of the shadows like an unleashed panther. “You have no right to look at my secret designs.”

Both women flinched. They wanted to scream at him that they cared nought about his designs and inventions—they wanted to shake him until he understood that they desperately, despairingly, doggedly tried to save his sons’ lives.

“Nothing in that room can give you any clues,” Curufin assured them as well, his eyes muddy with guilt and pleading. “He didn’t die there.”

“But something in that room would tell us more, wouldn’t it?” Aredhel insisted; her infallible instinct had picked up on a scent and she had her nose to the ground now, ready to follow it to wherever it might lead. “There is something you are hiding!”

“No,” he rasped, meeting her inquisitive, intense gaze bravely, “there is nothing in that room that could give you any answers.”

“Was there?” Haleth interrupted shrewdly—she had learned to read between the lines and make out the shapes sketched in the empty spaces around a seemingly innocuous picture. “Maybe, it’s not so much what we’d find in the room and much more what we wouldn’t find that would help us?”

The sight of stony faces all around and strong arms flexing instinctively made the hair at the back of her neck rise up in alarm.

Decisively, Aredhel took a step towards the door and its pervasive aura of secrecy and prohibition.

“Please don’t,” Celegorm pleaded and took her hand in a gesture so unprofessional and tender that she flinched violently. “Trust me…There are secrets—guilty and terrible but utterly irrelevant—that you don’t need to unearth to get to the bottom of this.”

“You forfeited your right to privacy when you denied us entry yesterday,” Aredhel replied coolly. “I am not entirely sure whether you can keep us out of the room, but just to be on the safe side, I’ll check that with a lawyer.”

A sigh of relief rustled through the congregation.

“I cannot let anyone else have access to it in the meanwhile though,” she continued in a steely tone, “and you’ve been contrary and singularly uncooperative, so I’ll take the lot of you down to the precinct.”

“There is enough incriminating evidence,” Haleth added weakly—she visibly hated this, no matter how adamantly she tried to keep a straight, professional mien.

“A word,” Maglor piped up suavely—he looked considerably less flustered than his siblings. Maybe, Haleth thought with a shiver of visceral revulsion, he simply was the better liar.

Pulling the two women into the living room and closing the door, he gave them his most condescendingly soothing smile.

“Nelyo broke the window and I’ve put up the boards,” he explained in a hushed, conspiratorial tone, “at that time, my father’s prototype had already gone missing, and the doors were locked.”

“Did he take it?”

“Of course not,” Maglor scoffed, “you don’t know my brother. He went to see…” For a moment, he looked abashed.

“My brother, right?” Aredhel clenched her jaw. “He went to see Finno; I should have known. It should be easy to check up on that.”

“Please!” An elegant, shapely hand with tell-tale callouses alighted on her forearm like a rare, delicate bird. “Don’t let them know that I’ve given them away. They think nobody knows.” All pretence of bonhomie seemed blown away and his eyes were wide and wild in a drawn, pale face that looked like a porcelain mask about to crack under the pressure and heat of the turmoil raging in his soul.

Aredhel grinned in a fit of all but forgotten comradery. “Don’t forget that I am your counterpart in this. I’ll be discreet.”

“Was the boy gone by that time?” Haleth asked, buffeted by the sheer agony in the eyes that now fell on her like a bone-breaking avalanche of stone and light.

“I don’t know,” Maglor admitted quietly. “That is the crux of the matter—we just surmised that he was here. We have…failed.”

“I will have to take you in,” Aredhel said, quiet regret in her voice, “if only to keep you safe. We don’t know who did this and whether they would not come for the rest of you.”

“We can take care of ourselves!” Maglor bristled.

Haleth, who could not bear the idea of finding the man she had allowed to slip through her hesitant fingers cold and dead, shivered. “We can’t take the risk,” she spoke firmly, dissimulating the quake of fear and longing in her heart as best she could.

“Oh you two,” Maglor laughed, “you could ask the pitiful clowns out and be done with it. If locks and a raging Fëanor cannot keep my brother in place, I doubt you and your flimsy bars could. Don’t do this to Nelyo—his brother is dead and he needs the comfort of…”

Aredhel nodded her understanding.

“Nobody killed my brother,” a wavering, thin, lifeless voice cut through their flimsy charade of good-humoured bickering. “Or I did.”

They all whirled around—they had forgotten about Amras, sitting motionless on the couch still, staring into a void that was unfathomable and unreachable for them.

“It was I who locked you in,” he went on in the monotone voice of one drowning on the inside. “Curvo and Father had been fighting all day about the blasted prototype. Then, all of you were screaming about whether it would work or kill us all. Amrod said he’d take it out of the house and store it somewhere safe, and I promised to make sure that none of you could catch up with him too soon. If only Nelyo had been content to stay put—no, he had to go break the only window he knew would give easily and thus alert everyone to the disappearance of the accursed thing. It is my fault my brother is dead.”

He took a deep shuddering breath. “I’ve texted him, letting him know that you knew. His last words were to hide the fact that he was gone and get rid of the keys in ludicrous ways. He must have become careless—I don’t know.”

“The metal,” Aredhel whimpered, “the stones.” In her mind, she went over the more extensive list she had found in her inbox that morning—she had thought about all kinds of torture devices or exotic weapons, but the idea of a novel device had not once crossed her mind. She should have known better.

“Oh kid,” Haleth exclaimed, feeling awkward. Her arms suddenly felt too heavy and coarse for the kind of comforting embrace she clumsily insinuated into the still air of a deathly silent room.

“I am so sorry,” Amras exclaimed and—like a dam breaking under the pressure of the penned-up violence of a river—he threw himself into the velvet pillows and wept bitterly.

They would all be sorry, Aredhel thought, and it would take years if not forever to even begin feeling somewhat steady again.

Helplessness and a vague, aimless anger—directed at no one in particular and yet so overwhelming that she could barely breathe—overcame her and she leaned heavily against the back of an ornate chair.

“Let’s pack you up,” she finally sighed, “so you can bid farewell to your brother. How about that?”

Maglor nodded gravely, looking more like a fairy tale prince than ever before, and conjured up a heart-wrenching smile.

“Call your brother, all right?” he said to Aredhel and gave her upper arm a feeble punch. “Can I entrust Tyelko and Moryo to you?”

Aredhel and Haleth watched as he lifted Amras into his arms and carried him out, exchanging whispered words with his other brothers, and getting them ready to depart promptly.

Yes, they would stick together, come what may. They would also deflect and try to lose themselves in frantic activity to avoid coming to terms with the terrible loss and their own share of guilt before they were ready to face those bleak, devastating truths—everyone, the women knew, had their own way with dealing with the unimaginable and it was hardly their place to impose healing to those who were not even able to look at the wound.

Nodding at each other grimly, the two policewomen accepted their share of the burden to carry and stepped back out into the hall resolutely.

---

Chapter End Notes

So, I hope you've enjoyed this.

It might have run away with me ever so slightly, but--as I said--I love crime stories.

Thank you for reading!