"Have you ever wondered what life would be like if we were someone else?"

"I hope you mean that as in 'if we were still twins'."

Catherine rolled her eyes, lying on the sofa as she stared at the whitewashed ceiling. Her short black hair was covering her eyes slightly, and she blew it out of her eyes in annoyance. Her brother, Caleb, was sitting on an armchair, nose in The Hobbit, but now his blue eyes, identical to Cat's, were trained on his younger twin.

"Of course I mean that. If I didn't have you, I'd either be arrested or dead, depending on what world we're talking about."

It was the truth, Caleb thought. Cat was the more reckless half of them – the one who would dive in, head first, into any situation without thinking through the consequences of her actions. The only reason she hadn't gotten detentions at school was because Caleb would stop her from jumping into fights or arguing with members of staff.

Cat sat up, legs across the arm of the sofa as she looked at her brother, almost inquiringly. Caleb raised an eyebrow.

"Why are you reading The Hobbit again?"

"I like J.R.R Tolkien's style. His characters. Just everything." He responded. "The movies were good, too."

"Sure were." Cat replied. "Being in The Hobbit would be cool, wouldn't it? Being on an adventure through god knows where and fighting and stuff."

"Not to mention it being incredibly dangerous." Caleb rolled his eyes. "But you wouldn't think about minor details like that, would you?"

"No. Because we'd know what would happen, so we'd just be epic at stopping the bad stuff from happening."

"But we wouldn't be able to tell anyone we know what would happen. Or why they're happening." Caleb sighed. "You really don't think things through, do you?"

"I do…sometimes…" Cat trailed off, her hand brushing a strand of hair behind her ear, showing off her silver ear cuff. It was in an elaborate, Celtic looking design, covering her helix and stopping about halfway down her ear where it turned into a silver chain and connected to the piercing in her ear lobe. She had many piercings on both her ears, but wore only a simple, sapphire looking stud on her right ear lobe. Cat had done most of this without their mother's permission, and had gotten a right telling off for doing so anyway. Not like she cared. Cat never cared about breaking rules, really. "But thinking things through is rather boring at times, don't you think?"

"I wouldn't know." Caleb commented dryly. "As I have to think things through for both of us most of the time, don't I?"

"True, true." Cat conceded, before standing up, stretching. "It's, like, half ten and mum still isn't home."

"I'm off to bed." Caleb stated, carefully placing a bookmark between two pages and closing the book shut. "Coming?"

"I guess." Cat shrugged, pulling her brother up. "I'm tired."

As Caleb said goodnight to his sister and made his way to his room, changing and pulling back the covers as he settled down for the night, his mind returned to their earlier discussion. How life would be if they were different. It would be interesting, he reasoned, to see how things would play out.

He didn't realise, as he closed his eyes, how weird life was going to get.

XoooX

Caleb groaned, clamping hands over his ears at the sound of footsteps and rolled over, promptly crashing into a body next to him. Well, that caused his eyes to shoot right open and him to startle back, staring.

Ok, this was so not his bedroom.

Grass and sky and trees and his sister. Cat looked grumpy herself, eyes half closed as she tried to gather herself together. She wasn't wearing her pyjamas – a simple pair of shorts and an old band shirt – but a green tunic type top and brown trousers. Her boots reached just below her knees, and were brown with laces. A pair of brown, fingerless gloves adorned her hands. A lot less extravagant than her usual attire. Her hair was still short, but instead of pin straight as usual, was in its natural, curly state. Her ears still held her piercings.

This made Caleb take notice of his own appearance. He was dressed mostly the same as Cat, except his boots were more sturdy looking and didn't travel as far up his legs and the gloves were absent.

"Ohmygodwhatthehellisgoingon?" Cat yelped, staring at the road. That was how Caleb knew something was wrong – Cat forgot to pause between words when she panicked, was high on sugar or squealing over something sweet. From the words he could detect – 'what', 'hell' and 'going on' – Caleb knew that it was the first one. He looked up.

And stared.

Blinked.

And stared some more.

Ok. That was Gandalf. That was bloody impossible because Gandalf wasn't real and – wait. He was asleep. Maybe…he pinched himself. It hurt and the wizard was still there, looking at the two of them in concern.

He was real.

"Shit. You see this, don't you?" Cat hissed urgently. Caleb nodded and Cat cursed some more. And very violently. Caleb really didn't want to know where she learnt those words and could do with never hearing them again. "But…that's fucking Gandalf!"

"No! I didn't notice!"

"Excuse me." Cat stopped glaring at Caleb to look up at the wizard. "I'm afraid I do not know either of you."

"Well, you wouldn't." Caleb said, taking this surprisingly well. Cat, on the other hand, was staring open mouthed. "But I – well, we – know you and –"

"How would you know me?"

"Um…"

"And why are you sitting by the side of the path?"

Caleb blanched. He really was rubbish when it came to explaining stuff. Fortunately, Cat burst into a detailed description of what had happened, how they knew him and so on and so forth.

"And I woke up when my idiotic brother decided to roll on top of me and bam! I was here. And this isn't supposed to be a real place, because there are bloody books about it and films and that's how we know about you but you don't know about us." Gandalf looked slightly sceptical. Caleb accepted that.

"I am heading to see Bilbo Baggins. You know of him?"

"Yes." Cat answered, getting to her feet shakily. She pulled Caleb up. "Why do you ask?"

"Would you like to go on a journey?"

"Would we!" Cat's eyes sparkled, answering for both of them. Caleb didn't even get to input his answer, which would have been something along the lines of 'yes', so really it didn't matter much. He also knew which book they were on, or in, or whatever. The Hobbit. He hoped it was the film version – Cat actually knew and remembered what happened in the film. She'd given up on the book a few pages in, because she couldn't get into it, which was typical of her, really. He realised that both had turned to him and Caleb was sort of not paying any attention.

"Um…I didn't catch that?" Cat rolled blue eyes, frustrated and let out a huff.

"We're moving. And Gandalf asked for your name."

"You could have given him that."

"I didn't want to."

"Typical of you." Cat stuck her tongue out immaturely as Caleb turned to the wizard, who looked rather amused. "It's Caleb. Caleb Adams."

"So, Master Caleb and Lady Catherine, shall we make our way there?"

"Well, obviously." Cat gestured absently with her hand. "Lead the way, your wizardly-ness."

Gandalf looked at her in amusement as he walked past and the two twins walked behind him.

"Wizardly-ness?"

"Well, he's a wizard."

"I doubt your sanity."

"Isn't that a daily occurrence?"

"…you do have a point."

XoooX

"We should stay away from the group of dwarves crowding the door. We shall end up falling over otherwise."

"Duly noted."

Caleb was actually relieved that he knew what was going to happen, but it was common sense to stay away from a crowd of people attempting to barge into one door because when it was answered, it was bound to cause an avalanche of people. The twins stayed around the outskirts with Gandalf. When the door was open, they weren't surprised to see the dwarves fall over, nor a disgruntled Bilbo Baggins.

"Gandalf." He did not sound pleased. But, then again, who would be when twelve dwarves, a wizard and two of the race of men (as they were called here) decided to show up, uninvited, at your house? Caleb would have gotten them out a long time ago. He did feel rather sorry for the hobbit.

Eventually, they were all gathered around the dining table. Caleb felt oddly tall, but fortunately he was short enough that he wasn't crashing against anything if he bent over slightly. Cat, who was quite a bit smaller than him, was slouching against a wall, eating an apple. They were garnering stares from the dwarves. That wasn't unexpected – they weren't exactly canon compliant. Caleb made a vow to stop Cat reading fan fictions and such when they got back. It was going to end up messing with his head, especially when she was obviously going to 'ship' Bilbo and Thorin. He pitied them both greatly.

"My friends, this is Master Caleb and Lady Catherine –"Gandalf was momentarily cut off by Cat coughing, sounding suspiciously like 'it's Cat', before continuing. "- who will be accompanying you on your journey."

Caleb found the stares disconcerting and shuffled awkwardly. He never was very good in social situations. Cat merely gave a jaunty salute, before taking another bite out of the apple in her hand.

"Wotcher!" She received blank looks.

"It's how she says 'hello', because she isn't normal." Caleb supplied helpfully.

"How nice of you to notice." Cat retorted dryly, before her eyes landed on Fili and Kili. She grinned. Oh, shit. "I like your moustache."

"Uh…thanks?" Fili tilted his head, as though in question. Caleb was surprised she hadn't insulted him or hit on him. Yes, Cat had a habit of mentally dating fictional characters, as many teenage girls did. It was something Caleb was very used to, having grown up with the over-the-top girl.

Sometimes, he wondered why they were twins.

They were ushered into seats and slowly introduced to the dwarves currently gathered.

"Oh my gosh, there are too many names!" Cat pretended to faint. Caleb gave her a criticising look, before turning to the rest of the company.

"Ignore her. She's an idiot."

"Am not!" Came her muffled reply. Caleb poked her shoulder.

"Are you two related?" Kili asked.

"We're twins." Caleb replied. "At least, that is what I have been told. I am beginning to have doubts."

"I've always had doubts." Cat was sitting up properly now, helping herself to a bread roll.

"Decided to return to the world of the living, have we?" Caleb asked mildly.

"Yeah. Being unconscious was boring."

"So, this quest." Caleb tried to turn the conversation to something normal, as both were earning baffled or amused looks, which wasn't very surprising. "Care to explain it?" Not like he needed it to be explained, but he had to pretend to be oblivious.

"We will, when Thorin comes." Balin said. Caleb could accept that, because he already knew what the quest was and all. Bilbo looked slightly annoyed at that, not that the boy could really blame him or anything. He would be very, very annoyed if he had to wait for someone to show up to find out why people had randomly shown up at his house. Fortunately, that wasn't his situation at the moment and he was rather hungry, so nabbed a bread roll like Cat and began to tear it apart, eating it piece by piece.

The dwarves helped themselves to tons of food, but Caleb decided to eat only what he needed. Poor Bilbo didn't ask to have his pantry raided by dwarves. Cat had no such restrictions, eating a lot and talking with the Durinakenshield brothers about random stuff. Caleb mostly listened to the conversations. Cat was the overly social one in the duo. Caleb was quiet and rather secluded, preferring the company of his books and such to living beings. They confused him.

Once they had finished, Cat sipping some water, Caleb caught the tail end of the conversation Bilbo was having with Gandalf – something along the lines of getting them out of his house. Caleb, once again, felt pity towards the hobbit. The poor, unfortunate soul.

"What should I do with my plate?" Well, he really should have been expecting that. Cat shot him a wink across the table, mouthing 'that's what Bilbo Baggins hates' to him. He rolled his eyes, before Bilbo cut across the knife battle thing that had ensued between the dwarves currently at the table. Caleb decided it would be best to try and remember their names. He assumed they were Bofur, Dori, Gloin and Nori. Honestly, what was with the similar sounding names? It must be a family thing.

"Don't do that, you'll blunt the knives!"

"Hear that lads? We'll blunt the knives!" Laughter ensued and Cat mouthed a countdown. Three…two…one…

"Blunt the knives, bend the forks –"

"Smash the bottles and burn the corks,"

Kili and Fili, admittedly, had good singing voices. In Caleb's opinion, this was a very glee-like moment, bursting into spontaneous song. Cat seemed to not mind this, tapping the rhythm on the table, mouthing the words as the brothers sang, before joining in with the dwarves. She loved doing stuff that normal people wouldn't consider…well, normal.

"Chip the glasses and crack the plates,

That's what Bilbo Baggins hates!

Cut the cloth, tread on the fat,

Leave the bones on the bedroom mat,

Pour the milk on the pantry floor,

Splash the wine on every door!

Dump the crocks in a boiling bowl!

Pound them up with a thumping pole!

And when you're finished if any are whole

Send them down the hall to roll!"

Cat was laughing during the instrumental break – for Christ's sake, one of them was playing a bloody teapot! How the hell did you play a teapot? Caleb had little musical knowledge and/or talent, only garnering what he knew from his sisters tastes in music and her piano lessons. To be honest, he would rather stay out of any musical business, thank you very much. They were highly efficient at cleaning stuff up, though. It was the least they could offer for humiliating poor Bilbo and eating all his food and drinking all his…well, drinks. He hastily shoved the remainder of his bread roll into his mouth.

"That's what Bilbo Baggins hates!"

Cheers erupted, Caleb rolling his eyes as he stood up and made his way over to the hobbit, who looked rather overwhelmed.

"Sorry about all this…well, I'm mostly apologising for our, 'our' being me and Cat, invasion of your house and her being an insensitive idiot." One of the dwarves had said something, causing her to roar with laughter along with the rest of the group. Caleb suppressed yet another eye roll.

"Oh, i-it's fine. Yes. I'd just like to know what possessed Gandalf to –to bring them all here!" Bilbo wrung his hands together.

There was a knock at the door and, immediately, the dwarves quietened down. So, this was the arrival of Thorin Oakenshield. Honestly, it was so…

"Dramatic much?" Cat muttered, voicing Caleb's thoughts. It was times like these when the boy was proud to call the rebellious Cat his twin. Sometimes, they were actually on the same line of thought.

"Shh." Kili slapped a hand over her mouth and the dwarves got up, gathering around the door. Cat shot Kili an annoyed glare, before Caleb could practically see the devilish smile in her eyes as he jerked his hand away, looking disgusted.

"You licked me!"

"Yes. Yes I did." With that, she flounced off and stood next to her brother as Bilbo attempted to make his way through the crowd of dwarves. Caleb sighed. Then there were moments like then, when he definitely did doubt that he had any relation to his so-called sister.

XoOoX

Some of y'all will recognise this from way back when as the prequel to The Journey Never Ends.

The original got taken down, possibly because song lyrics, so I'm slowly reuploading it. I'm not planning on changing the writing style, purely because it would take too much time to do that on here with all seventeen chapters, as well as doing the same on AO3 where this is also uploaded. So if this seems like a dramatic downgrade from my current style, that's because this was written in, like, 2015 so a good 3 years ago at least.

Anyway, if you want to read the full thing, it's under the same title and author as on here on AO3.

See you later! - Jazz xx