What Matters
Sometimes he has dreams, dreams where he doesn't seem to belong. Dreams where he knows he doesn't exist; he feels bad for Daisy for having left her alone. He doesn't know how she can get along with out him. Somehow she manages, and when he wakes he wonders: does she ever think about him?
It's all a game of 'what if' and 'could have been' after all, and in the deep dark corners of his mind finds himself thinking about them more often than not. He can't not think about them. He's heard the stories, he's put two with two. He'd been tough on Mum during the time she carried him. He could have not been born at all.
Where would he be, then, if he hadn't been born?
He didn't like thinking about it but sometimes he couldn't help himself. It creeps up and he feels it gnawing at the back of his mind, the stinging of a midge he just can't shoo away. What would it be like; what would Meli, and Molly, and Daisy, do without him? They were a set, after all. What would they do without him?
He's tired, sitting in the big chair; the afternoon rolls on beyond the depths of the smial and only a small patch of light crawls across the floor. Its autumn outside and the air is cool. A fire leaps and dances in the hearth and he sits there, watching it, and yet not watching all the same.
What would it be like...?
He doesn't hear it, the gentle pad of hobbit-feet on the floor, and then Sammie shrieks loudly as small hands come down to cover his eyes. "Guess who!" a laughing voice cries out, and then Sam is batting at his sister's hands in annoyance, scowling as her laughter rings like a bell.
"That was rotten of you, Daise," Sammie mutters, and the gold haired girl continues to laugh; she tugs on a clump of his dark curls and motions for him to scoot over, a sweet smile on her lips. He does, scowling still, but a bit of her laughter lighting up his eyes. She always knows how to get him to smile. Even when...
Those thoughts come back and Sam looks away, crossing his arms over his chest. Daisy leans forward, smiling still, and then a worried look settles down. She smoothes her skirt absently and leans closer to her brother's ear. "What are you thinking about, Sammie? Is something wrong?"
The smell of summer flowers comes with the sound of her voice, and Sam looks back towards her, lifting his hand up to shield the light of the glow that seems to surround her. That look doesn't seem right on Daisy's face, and Sam knows that no matter how many 'what ifs' or 'could have been's there are, those thoughts are only thoughts, and those dreams really are only dreams.
They both know that, and he shouldn't dwell.
"Nothing." He says, laughing as he reaches out and tugs sharply on thick strands of his sister's done up hair. She shrieks and he laughs still as he races out of the parlor. Daisy is after him in an instant; she's laughing, too.
They almost run into their parents, their uncle, but they dart around the trio and race deeper into the smial. Sam and Rose share a smile and Frodo a laugh as he looks after the boy, his boy, their children, and then he turns to Sam, and to Rose, and they smile.
No words are said and they feel the need to pull together in a tangle of limbs, unseen in the hall. In the distance, children are heard. They have what matters, they have their love; they have their 'could have been' and the story that they've made their own.
~
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