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Nerdanel Smith was a normal, ordinary sculptress. Her family had been smiths for at least ten generations. When she abandoned the forges for a sculpture studio it was the greatest shock of her generation, worse even than when she picked up a gun for the first time and shot a chicken instead of the target.
Nerdanel Smith was an ordinary sculptress. Istarnie was a skilled field operative working for Noldor Security Incorporated with a preference for bashing target’s heads in with hammers, because her shooting ability left much to be desired.
And so -
“Do you really need help to shoot this guy?” Maglor peered through the scope of his sniper rifle. “I mean, can’t you just hit him real hard?”
“The aim is to be discrete,” she said. “I can’t leave my signature here. We have to throw the scent away from us.” She frowned at her watch. “And if we don’t hurry up we’ll be late to the auditorium. I can’t afford to stalk him through a metropolitan area; I already promised you I’d take you to practice and then I have to meet your father for dinner.”
Maglor made a disgusted face into the scope at the reminder his parents still did romantic sappy stuff like dates. Nerdanel would ruffle his hair fondly, but her eldest children had reached the age where they said I’m not a baby, mom, if she fussed too much. “Can’t you just make father shoot him instead?”
She chuckled. “He’s busy getting Celegorm to his rugby match.” The target came into view. Maglor squinted into his focus, then switched out so Nerdanel could confirm and shoot a hole into their forehead.
“And besides,” she added, ruffling her son’s hair despite his indignation. “This is our little secret, okay?”
Fëanor Smith was an extraordinary man. He was a jewelsmith. He invented and radicalized the technological world. He knew how to work a sixteenth-century forge. Sometimes, he designed weapons for the federal government. Very often, he designed weapons for the shady secret branch running the federal government. When he got irritated enough at life, he even used those secret weapons.
“I’m bored,” Celegorm whined. He was sprawled in the back of the van Fëanor had commandeered. It was painted with yellow flowers, and the text on the side read Love The Valar and Peace Will Follow. “You said we’d be doing something cool.”
“We will be doing something cool,” said Fëanor. “Pass me the red box - no, not that one, the one labeled ‘dangerous, use carefully’. Watch closely. Normally, this grenade would be filled with shrapnel. But if we replace it with two compartments and a thin degradable mesh inbetween, we can instead create a chemical bomb whose activation delay is dictated by the degratation.”
“Time-delay explosives are boring if you can’t see the boom,” said Celegorm. But he was leaning over Fëanor’s shoulder expectantly.
“This isn’t a time-delay explosive,” said Fëanor. “Ah, look, it’s our target.”
The van was equipped with discrete cameras outside, and inside with monitors showing the feed. The target was clearly irritated about something, yelling into their phone as they got into their car. When they inevitably crashed from the sabotaged car, which Fëanor had rigged to subsequently suffer a fuel-tank explosion, it would almost certainly be ruled a case of road rage.
“I thought you were going to blow them up,” said Celegorm, as they watched the target pull out of the parking lot.
“Later,” said Fëanor.
“But then why make a grenade if you aren’t using it?” Celegorm whined again.
“This is for you,” said Fëanor, passing him the inert grenade. It was painted like a cheap plastic Pokemon ball. “I rigged it to be filled with mild foul-smelling chemicals. You can release it in your opponent’s locker room before Sunday’s rugby match to demoralize them.” It also had small traces of sedatives, but that was besides the point.
“Nice,” said Celegorm, holding the glorified stink-bomb to his chest.
“Don’t tell your mother about any of this,” Fëanor reminded him. “She wouldn't approve.”
The thing was, two decades of companionship and seven children later, their marriage was starting to sour. Not sour, maybe. Go bland? Die out? The flames of passion were extinguished by the rolling sand-dunes of tranquility?
Somehow, in between reaching middle age and developing carpal tunnel, they had also run out of things to talk about.
Even their children!
Once, they could talk about their children for hours. A sampling:
Maedhros had finally stopped panicking about applying to university and was applying to every single one that passed all their rigorous tests. (Including, but not limited to, academic achievement. Location. Defense-standards. How many weapons one can hide in a dorm, and how close-by and modifiable the apartments were.)
Maglor’s recitals had caught the eye of the director of the Alqualonde Fine Arts Institute and they had been approached about intensive lessons, still pending due to costs, transportation, and the extensive background profiling they were individually conducting on every teacher.
Celegorm had punched a classmate, not gotten caught while sabotaging his opponent’s rugby team, and won his national debate championship. They were both very proud of Celegorm.
Caranthir had started an online war with a world-renowned mathematician. He was now a meme. They had individually been assured by all their children being a meme was simultaneously extremely embarrassing and something to be very proud of. The situation required further inquiry.
Curufin had tried to build a nuclear warhead in their backyard. They were slightly more concerned about Curufin than all their other children, because Curufin lacked discretion and ordered fifty pounds of uranium with his Grandfather Finwe’s credit card.
The twins had learned how to walk.
Of course, even their children was a topic that could not sustain conversations indefinitely. Fëanor could hardly share his pride over Celegorm’s excellent sabotage skills when he would be admitting to teaching his children how to build grenades in the process. Nerdanel could hardly admit to helping Maedhros with his self-defense skills when it would involve explaining how she knew fifty ways to kill a person with a chisel.
Such were the woes of marriage!
And so they were stuck in a mostly-silent, bland conversation about the salmon in tonight's dinner.
“I can cook better salmon,” said Fëanor.
“I’m aware.”
“Why are we at this mediocre restaurant?”
Nerdanel hit his shin underneath the table. “We agreed to have a date night.”
“Why did we do that?”
“We haven’t had one since before the twins were born.”
They grimaced at their salmon. “What happened to us?” Fëanor wondered. “We used to be so - passionate.”
“We turned forty,” Nerdanel suggested.
“I’m thirty-eight,” said Fëanor.
Nerdanel hit him again. Her kicks were always so powerful, his lovely, red-haired wife. Fëanor loved her, he really did. He married her out of convenience and for the sake of cover, but you could hardly live with someone for two decades without feeling some sort of affection for them.
“Maybe we should go abroad,” said Fëanor. “Travel again, like we used to. Have wild, crazy adventures. Explore the many types of stone in national parks and steal it for our crafting purposes.”
Nerdanel laughed. Then, she stopped and considered it. “The Pelori again?”
“We never did climb them. And didn’t they build that winter lodge recently?”
“The exclusive one mostly hosting dignitaries?”
“I’m sure I can get us spots,” said Fëanor. He could almost certainly get them spots. It hadn’t been his intention when suggesting they travel, but there was a certain diplomat from Angband that was on the NSI’s hit list staying there. Rekindling romance, killing targets. “It’ll be a lovely vacation,” he decided.
“You’re leaving?” Caranthir demanded. “Both of you, at the same time?”
“Just a week,” said Nerdanel.
“But who will take care of us?”
“Maitimo will.” Maedhros made a face at them. “And we’ve contacted your Aunt Anaire and her husband too. They’ll be coming by to help.”
“I hate them,” said Curufin. “They told me phosphorus was a dangerous chemical and I shouldn’t be playing around with it, despite them not following proper lab protocol while I was.”
Not for the first time, Nerdanel wondered how, exactly, her temperament and Fëanor’s intellect had combined to form Curufin. It was surely karma for abandoning her father’s smithy in favor of murder and stonecraft.
“You can survive one week with them,” said Fëanor. “Think of it as time to plan out your next experiments, and reflect on why you should not steal your grandfather’s credit card.”
“I didn't steal it,” said Curufin mulishly. “I told him what I was going to buy, he laughed and handed his card over.”
That did, unfortunately, sound like something Finwe would do.
“Next time, you show him exactly what you are buying before you buy it.”
“Yes, mother.”
Maglor was still at the kitchen counter shoveling cereal into his mouth, regarding them all like they were a traveling circus. Celegorm had shrugged, implied it was gross they were going on a week-long date, and showed off his missing tooth from his rugby match again. The twins were too young to contribute to the conversation. Maedhros had a thoughtful look on his face.
“Can Fingon stay over?” he asked. “To help take care of everyone?”
Fëanor and Nerdanel shared a glance and shrugged at one another. “Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.”
“Always practice safe sex,” Fëanor added. “Do you need me to buy you condoms?”
Maedhros turned beet red. “Dad!”
“What, it’s important to always be prepared - “
“I thought you were leaving,” said Maedhros.
“In a week,” said Fëanor, and ruffled his eldest son’s hair, despite how Maedhros was taller and started whining that Fëanor was messing up his look.
A week later, they had packed for hiking, high-end cocktail nights, and murder.
“Hi Auntie!” Fingon chirped at them, a large rucksack thrown over his shoulder. “Uncle.”
“Little brat,” said Fëanor as a greeting. “What mischief have you gotten up to since you last failed to climb our house and sneak into my son’s room?”
Fingon grinned sheepishly at him. He sent Maedhros a very unsubtle, questioning glance, and at the slightly more subtle yet still frantic head-shake he received said, “Nothing. We have done nothing suspicious ever. We are very normal people.” Fingon paused, then puffed out his chest. “Very normal men.”
Maedhros rubbed his palm down his face and stared, agonized, into the distant wall. Teenagers. Always so dramatic.
Fingon cheerfully ignored Maedhros’ agony to plop his rucksack on the floor. “I got more baking soda,” he told Maedhros.
Fëanor frowned. “We’re running low?” They usually had stacks upon stacks of it, since it was so widely accessible and so great at removing bloodstains.
“I used it all up last weekend,” said Maedhros.
“On what?”
“Cleaning.” Maedhros shrugged. “Clothing. And the house.”
It was cleaner than it had been before Fëanor came back from his mission this weekend. But then again, it hadn’t been dirty before. He and Nerdanel shared a glance. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” said Maedhros. “We had a very normal weekend.”
Fëanor stared at them. “Did you practice safe sex like I told you to?”
Fingon started choking on his spit. Maedhros turned redder than his hair. “Dad!”
Fëanor chuckled. “I just don't want you to send each other to the hospital.”
“Don’t jinx it,” said Nerdanel, equally fond. “It’s our children. Ah, and that would be our car. Bye, kids! Don’t blow up the house.”
Maedhros visibly placed a restraining hand on Curufin’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he told them, smiling brightly. “I’ll keep them in line.”
“Listen up, maggots,” said Maedhros. His brothers were sitting in the front row of the movie room in various stages of contempt and boredom. Fingon was beside him holding rope. Caranthir, tied to the opposite end of the rope, squirmed. “Our parents will be gone for a week. That means all the kidnapping attempts will triple, and enemies will come to booby trap the house. If you see someone suspicious, kill them.” He hit next on his powerpoint presentation, and the slides shifted to a big red NO STRANGERS ALLOWED IN HOUSE.
Curufin’s hand shot up into the air.
“No,” said Maedhros. “Uncle Nolofinwe and Aunt Anaire don’t count as strangers even if you only see them once every six months.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“Then what?”
“Hypothetically,” began Curufin.
“No,” said Maedhros, already feeling a headache between his eyes. Fingon laughed, because Fingon had not yet realized Curufin was a sneaky little brat who would take advantage of every loophole and would, in fact, get rid of Fingon’s parents given the right incentive. “Whatever it is, no. No ‘accidental’ murder, and if they startle you and you ‘mistakenly’ shoot them, I’m still telling mom and dad so they can ground you.”
“What about mild chemical burns to demoralize them and warn them off?”
“Absolutely not. No explosions either. If you blow up this house I will tell mother about the incident with the silly cheese strings and why your classmates had to go to the hospital.”
Curufin sniffed. “That was their own foolishness.”
“Who let them into the lab in the first place?” Maedhros hissed at him. “They’re preschoolers, they don’t even have opposable thumbs.”
Curufin frowned at him. “Did you ever pass basic anatomy?”
Celegorm yawned. “Can I go now? You’ve given me this presentation like, a thousand times.”
“No.”
“You could at least change the slides.”
“I’m not accepting critique at this moment.”
“I can’t believe you’re actually dating him,” said Caranthir to Fingon. “You have really bad taste.”
“He’s your brother.”
“Exactly,” said Caranthir. “I know how much he sucks.”
“He’s not too bad,” said Fingon, laughing. “He taught me how to dispose of a body and get bloodstains out of couch fabric.”
“Is that why the house reeked of blood this weekend?” Curufin frowned at him. “You’re terrible at discrete murder.”
“He did fine for someone who’d never stabbed an enemy before,” Maedhros protested. “It’s not his fault he didn’t realize the human body contains an average of five liters of blood.”
“Lame,” said Celegorm. “Are you sure he’ll survive a week here?”
“Think of it as a trial period,” said Fingon. “I’ll probably marry your brother so you’ll be seeing a lot of me.”
Unbeknownst to Fingon, Caranthir had squirmed out of his restraints - a new record of under five minutes - and was tying Fingon’s shoelaces together. Maedhros would warn him, but Fingon had to develop situation awareness at some point. He was a kinesthetic learner. It would be good for him.
“None of us is going to die,” said Maedhros. “Just everyone else.”
“Aren’t you too young to think of marriage?” asked Caranthir, voice full of doubt, as he was crouching up.
“It’s never too early to not be forced to testify against him in court,” answered Fingon cheerfully. He still did not seem to notice his captive had escaped and retaliated.
A warm fuzzy feeling filled Maedhros. Maybe he should warn Fingon about the shoelaces? He had much to contemplate. “Let’s not get distracted,” he said. He hit next on the powerpoint slide. A list titled SUSPICIOUS INDIVIDUALS AND HOW TO AVOID THEM came on screen.
“Not this again,” groaned Celegorm. “I talked to the dog walker who happened to be an enemy one time - “
Maedhros ignored him. “First up, cute lost old ladies - “
Pelori Heights was an overpriced hotel precariously perched on the mountainside. It boasted ski tracks, an overview of the snowy peaks, three separate cocktail lounges, and half a dozen honeymoon suites.
Nerdanel and Fëanor were not actually on their honeymoon, but it might as well have been. They raced each other down the ski tracts and were, occasionally, reminded that knees start going bad as you approach forty (“I’m thirty-eight,” Fëanor said, with an air of betrayal). They found a cave full of stalagmites and tried to figure out how to smuggle a large stone back to the hotel for carving purposes. They wined, dined, and as the week drew to a close, unexpectedly found themselves sharing a drink with a high profile engineer from Angband. He and Fëanor bonded over their hitherto-unknown common linguistic hobby. Nerdanel had an interesting conversation with him about stonecraft.
She was almost sad to kill him.
Alas, work waited for no sentimentalities.
After she and Fëanor retired to their room, and the target to his, Fëanor went for an hour-long soak in the bathtub that she declined to join. “I want to analyze the striations in the stone,” she lied, even though the sculptor part of her did indeed want to examine her contraband carving material.
While her husband sang to himself in the hot-tub and the scent of some strange chemical mix of hotel-soaps wafted into the greater room, Nerdanel looped up a track of music she played in her studio, put on a hotel staff’s outfit, and walked out the door.
Unbeknownst to her, at that same moment Fëanor was crawling out the bathroom window, in lizard-fashion.
She made her way towards the target’s rooms, a few security and decoration levels above the room Fëanor’s government contacts had (certainly through some amount of nepotism) acquired for them. She pulled a gilded statue from its stand, regarded the stern gaze and pouty lips with a sculptress' unimpressed eye, and decided the neck would be a good hold for a club. The carving left much to be desired, but the solid bronze weight of it would bash in the target’s skull quite easily.
At the same moment she stood outside the target’s room, Fëanor pulled himself onto the target’s balcony. He put aside his wall-grips in favor of a small gun.
The target, who until then had been exiting his own half-hour-long bath, frowned as his balcony door and bedroom door rattled simultaneously. He pressed the distress beacon around his neck, crouched, and as his doors opened, sprinted for an escape route his security team had prepared.
A bullet crashed into his shoulder, and he fell, screaming, narrowly missing the gilded statue aimed at his head. But rather than aim again, his assailant exclaimed, “Fëanor?!”
The shooter in the balcony seemed equally shocked. “Nerdanel?”
The target bled on the floor, grit his teeth, cursed the field of linguistics, and with an unexpected burst of speed threw himself through the bedroom door and out the window, falling into soft cushions prepared before-hand, and disappeared into the night.
In the hallway outside his room, bright red emergency lights turned on. Fëanor and Nerdanel still stared at one another, their weapons held in tight grips, and simultaneously turned away and retreated back to their suite.
“How’s the week been so far?” asked Fingolfin. He and Fingon were sitting on the porch, watching Maglor chase Celegorm after some kind of musical-instruments related infraction. Maglor had knives, but Fingolfin was mostly certain they were blunt, and Celegorm was laughing like it was some big game.
“Well,” said Fingon, watching his cousin try to murder his other cousin. “Some group of black-wearing goons tried to sneak in, fell into one of Curufin’s traps, and got partially dissolved in the kiddie pool. It was really gross, and I think they had explosives on them and someone took them, but Curufin is denying everything and Maedhros hasn’t found explosive contraband yet. You can tell it’s contraband because the rest of the explosive material in-house isn’t ready to blow. And Maedhros wanted to go on a date to one of those fancy new coffee shops, but I realized we’d have to take all his brothers with us so I talked him into burgers or pizza instead.” Fingolfin counted the seconds as Fingon took a single, large breath. “Also, Caranthir tied my shoelaces together. Twice.”
That at least explained his frantic call instructing him to bring ‘shoes without laces, asap’.
Anaire had finished explaining the virtues of good PR to Caranthir, who had been losing his flame war against the international math society, noticed Maglor was trying to murder Celegorm, said, “Honestly!” at seeing him and Fingon sitting around, and went to stop them.
“Sounds eventful,” said Fingolfin. Maglor was denying all murderous intent, but Anaire was a top barrister and wasn’t buying any of it. Judging by his scowl, Curufin was going to gain an ally in the ‘aunt and uncle are evil’ camp.
“I think it’s fun,” said Fingon, because Fingon’s character had always skewed more after the side of the family that went to work in the NSI.
“Try not to kill anyone,” said Fingolfin.
“Too late,” said Fingon, cheerfully.
Maedhros had been coming up behind them. His eldest nephew looked vaguely ashamed at Fingon’s easy admission. “It’s not usually this bad,” said Maedhros. “We usually only get a threat once a week when they’re gone. I don’t know what’s wrong with today.”
Today, a team of assassins had tried to scale the wall to stage a kidnapping attempt. After that had been dealt with in a rather brutal fashion involving ping-pong balls and an automatic machine gun, Fingolfin and Anaire discovered that someone had tried to sneak a bomb into their car, and the culprit wasn’t Curufin but an enemy agent who used a lethal pill the moment the children caught them. There had been a suspicious increase in dog-walkers and old ladies in need of help crossing the street too.
He was starting to get a bit worried.
“Shouldn’t you tell your parents about it?”
“Of course not!” Maedhros exclaimed. “They’re probably dealing with some super important mission right now. I don’t want to distract them from whatever critical fight they’re having.”
“Twenty years!” yelled Fëanor.
“I didn’t hear you saying anything either!” yelled Nerdanel back. “And all those times with the shitty excuses - “
“All the ‘inspiration trips’ - “
"Do you even LIKE hour-long showers?!" she cried.
"I love them!" He yelled back. "I bet you don't even like hiking."
"It's my favorite type of exercise!"
They scowled at one another. “Liar!” they hissed.
“Anyway,” said Maedhros. “They’ll be back in a few days and things will go back to normal.”
“Right,” said Fingolfin, privately resolving to bring it up with Nerdanel. “Well, things seem about as expected.” He paused. “Also, could you tell Curufin to stop trying to kill us? He’s getting inventive about it and I’m worried he’s going to blow up the house.”
“ - and my father took you in and apprenticed you after you ran from home - “
“I bet you were engineering the whole thing to get close to me!”
“Who even needs you?!“
“My money and connections - “
“I spit on them!”
“Um,” said the flight attendant.
“Twenty years of marriage!” they hissed at her, and explained nothing else.
“That’s great,” said the attendant, smile unflinching. “Have you considered couples therapy instead of yelling in the boarding area?”
In a secret shady hideout deep beneath the rumbling stones of Beleriand, a well-dressed man paced. “What do you mean you haven’t captured any of their children? The eldest is seventeen and the youngest are toddlers. How hard can a herd of teenagers be to subdue? Yes, I know their aunts and uncles live nearby! One is a religious zealot and the others are bureaucrats - no, I don’t care the youngest sister is a world renowned improv comedian - distract the adults and capture the children before those two shitheads get back home, or I’ll have your head on a pike instead!”
He threw his phone against a wall. It was one of many technological casualties.
“You might get lucky,” said his well-dressed colleague. Her sharp teeth glinted as she smiled. “The failure to assassinate you seems to have prompted a marital dispute of unknown proportions. At this rate, they’ll behead each other instead of you.”
A new phone was deposited in the well-dressed man’s hand.
The well-dressed man read the new report from his phone. “Did they not know they were both assassins?” he asked eventually, each word slow and careful, as though he could not quite believe what he was saying.
“Apparently.”
“They’ve been married for twenty years and have seven children.”
“Competence and idiocy aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“Hmm,” said the well-dressed man. He smirked. “Fascinating. I still want their children, but you’re right. Call off the assassins waiting in the airport. Let them deal with each other.”
They made it to the house in one piece. Somehow. Fëanor would be lying if he said he wasn’t tempted to crash the car out of spite. But back they get, and he even helped Nerdanel (the liar!) unload the large stone they smuggled from the Pelori off the car and into her studio.
(Just because she was a liar didn’t mean they ought to waste good stone. It was the principle of the matter.)
In the resounding silence of her studio, surrounded by her unmoving masterpieces of stone, he saw the sculpting tools with a new eye. “Close range fighter,” he deduced.
Nerdanel picked up a hammer. “I like working with my hands.”
“So messy,” said Fëanor, clicking his tongue. Nerdanel narrowed her eyes.
At some point, they started circling the stone. It was good the children were out of the house. Fëanor’s teeth had been itching for something to bite into, his hands clawing with the urge to punch his rage out now that screaming had been exhausted. From the silent tension in Nerdanel’s shoulders, she had been seeking something to smash. Most likely, that something was Fëanor’s face.
Such a shame he was caught in her studio. If it had been his -
He pulled out a gun and ducked just as her hammer sailed where his head was. It crashed into one of her works in progress, and the marble shattered. Fëanor laughed despite himself, stone dust flying into the air and into his lungs as he dived for the doorway. As he ran he fired at the shock of brown-red hair, but his bullet smashed into a window and broke it into a dozen sharp pieces. One was immediately thrown at his chest and missed by a wide margin. He laughed again.
“Your aim needs work, darling!” He grinned wildly. “Shall we next date in the gun field? Maybe by the end you’ll be able to hit something.”
He snuck away into the kitchen, where he had stashed several dozen weapons in various locations. There was his electrified knife, those were his little drone bombs, that was a grenade. He lobbed it in the direction of her studio but it came flying back not a second later, and he barely dodged the explosion by diving behind the couch.
“So many inventions, but you can’t even use them properly,” his wife mocked. Her footsteps echoed around the corner, which meant she must be elsewhere. “All the time spent tinkering in your lab is going to waste.”
“Excuse you,” Fëanor protested. He activated his drone bombs and scattered them across the living room. “My work is revolutionary!”
“The only thing good about your lab is the furnace for burning bodies!”
Well - “I use it for that too,” Fëanor admited, and detonated one of his remote bombs.
The house shuddered. Nerdanel rolled behind the couch right in time to avoid a falling beam.
They looked at one another.
There was stone dust in her hair and her face was blotchy red, just like Caranthir whenever he got too emotional. Her eyes were a thin ring around large black, and not for the first time, Fëanor though, you’re the most amazing creature I have ever seen.
Funny. It had been a while since he thought that.
“Do you really use my furnace for body disposal?” he asked.
“Have you ever used my carving knives to make them small enough to fit?” she asked in turn.
“Of course. Except I recently invented these knives that cut through bone like butter - “
She made an exasperated noise, grabbed his hair, and kissed him.
For a moment, Fëanor felt all of eighteen again, high off his first successful mission, lost in the wilds of around the old Formenos ruins. And she had been there, and the landslide he had engineered had sent them both running for their lives, and it had been the highlight of his short life to keep his hand clutched in hers until they made it to safety.
The house trembled around them again. They pull apart.
“Bombs inside the house,” she said, dismayed, in a tone just shy of berating their sons.
“I’m very careful about the detonations,” said Fëanor. “I knew exactly where everything was going off. These secondary detonations have no business happening unless there’s more explosives scattered around, which I don’t - “ He cuts himself off.
Fëanor and Nerdanel looked at each with a parent’s knowing dismay. “Curufin.”
They barely made it out of the house before it went up in flames.
“I think that’s one of my necklaces,” said Fëanor. He and Nerdanel were lying in the flaming remnants of their yard. Their house was merrily burning behind them, the flames occasionally turning green or red as different chemicals were consumed.
“The one on the tree?” asked Nerdanel.
“The one in the shrubs,” Fëanor corrected. “But that too.” He contemplated getting to save it, and decided against it. The ground was quite comfortable.
Their hands were still clasped.
“Oh my god,” said Maedhros. “What happened?!”
Fëanor abruptly found ample reason to stand up. Nerdanel joined him a moment later, and they hastily straightened out their clothing.
All their children were in the street, staring at the house and them in varying degrees of disbelief. They’re holding two large pizza boxes in hand.
“Hi, kids,” said Nerdanel. She clears her throat. “Did you have a good week?”
“We didn’t do that!” said Maglor, and pointed at the burning house.
“No, no, we know,” said Nerdanel. “That was us.”
There’s a moment of deep, awkward silence, broken only by the crackling of flames.
“We got carried away,” said Fëanor. Despite the level of destruction, he and Nerdanel shot each other a fond look.
Maedhros looked like he might cry from stress. Maglor looked distinctly unimpressed. Celegorm looked impressed. Caranthir was soothing the twins, and Curufin -
“Do I understand correctly,” said Curufin, frowning. “That when I almost burn down the house it’s ‘something that I must never repeat lest I be grounded until adulthood,’ but when you do it, it’s flirting?”
Fëanor opened his mouth. Fëanor closed his mouth.
“...We have no defense,” Nerdanel admits.
Their defense was that technically, this was Curufin’s fault for stashing unknown explosives around the house. But Fëanor was smart enough to realize: ultimately the blame lay with himself for teaching his preteens how to make explosives. He kept his mouth shut.
Just then, a troop of suspicious black vans pulled up the street. The kids all tense.
“They’re back,” Celegorm hissed.
“Who’s they?” asked Nerdanel, her voice deceptively relaxed.
“The evil organization trying to kidnap us,” said Caranthir, holding the twin’s harness tighter. “I thought we got rid of them all already.”
“They did what now?” asked Nerdanel, flatly.
“We’ll be talking about this later,” said Fëanor. From the cars, a familiar figure stepped out.
It was the target from the botched mission.
“Well,” said the target. “I didn’t expect you to still be alive.”
Fëanor considered the burning house without turning around. Yes, he would also expect to not be alive, if he hadn’t known his wife as well as he did.
“No matter,” said the man. His men stepped out and pointed guns at them. It was the first time Fëanor had found himself defenseless as an enemy threatened to kill him and those he loved. He hated the feeling immediately.
The kids huddled close to them. Fëanor had a mere moment to regret all his life choices leading up to this. Imagine, only if he had been a simple jewelsmith! Imagine, if the kids had only come back a few moments later, they might yet live!
And maybe if he and his children hadn’t filled the house with exploses, they would have weapons to fight this off. Alas!
Then, a familiar voice cleared his throat. “Excuse me.”
They all looked to the side, where Fëanor’s least favorite brother was standing. He looked remarkably intimidating for someone who has a desk job. It probably had to do with how extremely pissed off he was.
“Yes?” asked the target, sounding faintly puzzled. “We’re in the middle of something here.”
“Get out of here,” Fëanor snapped at Fingolfin. “This has nothing to do with you.”
“You’re my brother,” said Fingolfin, sounding vaguely exasperated. “It has everything to do with me.”
“You want to die together,” the target concluded. “Quaint.”
“Gods, no,” said Fingolfin. Fëanor agreed. Fingolfin glared at the target. “Put down your guns. Utunmo liutenant known as ‘Sauron’, you are under arrest by the NSI for murder, torture, mutilation of corpses, arsony, slander, and a myriad other crimes. If you come peacefully, your sentence may be reduced.”
“If not?” asked Sauron, curious and amused.
Fingolfin gave a sharp gesture. From all of the neighborhood houses, people Fëanor had known for decades as fairly harmless busibodies came out wielding an impressive arsenal of weaponry. Some of them he designed himself. Within seconds, they had Sauron’s men surrounded.
“Hmm,” said Sauron, less curious and amused.
“I hope you resist,” said Fingolfin, his tone almost casual. “You’ve been threatening my nephews all week, and by coincidence my son was involved in your plots.” He smiles without any mirth. Fëanor is amazed at how dangerous his paper-pusher brother looks at that moment. “I’m really looking forward to you giving me an excuse to not let you live long.”
The enemy drops their guns fairly quickly after that.
“I’m sorry,” said Anaire, later that day. “You’ve been married for how long and didn’t know you worked for the same secret organization?”
“Your husband works for that same secret organization,” said Fëanor. “He never told me about it either.”
Fingolfin sighs. “I told you I worked for Father. We both work for Father. Father is the head of the NSI.”
“Yes,” said Fëanor, dismissively. “But I thought you had a desk job.”
“So do you!”
“Semantics. How was I to know you commanded all the forces in the area?”
“I ask you for advice sometimes!”
“I think you should stop doing that,” muttered Anaire under her breath, but not low enough the rest of them couldn’t hear. At least two of Nerdanel’s sons snickered.
It was extremely embarrassing that their sons knew all the truth before they did, but at least now she had an explanation for Maglor’s good aim. He certainly hadn’t inherited it from her.
“At least Finwe owning all the real estate nearby makes rebuilding the house much simpler,” said Nerdanel.
…Even if all their embarrassing miscommunication was now aired for all the neighbors to know.
“I want a music room,” said Maglor immediately.
“A big gym!” said Celegorm.
“A big room,” said Caranthir. “Like huge.”
“I’m moving out immediately,” said Maedhros.
“Wait,” said Curufin. He looked at them very seriously. “Can I blow up the next house?”