The first thing Merry noticed when he woke up was how pleasantly warm and comfortable he was, in a comfortable bed that reminded him so much of home. He breathed in, smelling the scent that often filled hobbit holes, a mixture of pipeweed and fresh baking. It took a moment for Merry to realise that he wasn't supposed to be in a hobbit hole, but rather a great city of men, and then he opened his eyes, taking in the room around him, his memories coming back of he and Pippin on their long trek through the snow.
Pippin lay beside Merry, curled under the blankets, sound asleep, breathing deeply and snuggled close to Merry's side. Merry blinked, and looked around the room. They were certainly in a hobbit hole...Bag End itself, if Merry was not much mistaken. He recognised the room they were in, although it was arranged differently, with different furniture and decorations. The Elvish tapestry depicting a forest that Pippin had always loved as a child was conspicuously absent.
Merry took a moment to study Pippin. In the light he could confirm that yes, Pippin did look to be in his early tweens...about 12 years old, at a guess. Merry smiled, combing his fingers through his cousin's curly hair, fondly remembering the antics he and Pippin used to get up to when they had been younger...or rather, up until they left the Shire with Frodo and Sam.
Pippin stirred in his sleep, mumbling, before drifting back into a deep slumber, and Merry let the smile slide off his face. It had been less than a year since that fateful day, and so much had changed. Frodo and Sam had destroyed the ring, and were forever changed by the ordeal, Pippin would carry scars on his back and legs from the whips during their march across Rohan with the Uruk Hai for the rest of his life, as well as the scars from the injuries he gained during the battle at the Black Gate and the burns he received while saving Faramir from being burned by his father, and those were just the physical changes that had occurred.
Merry knew that none of the four hobbits who set out from the Shire that day would ever be the same again...he had already seen the signs of it...how withdrawn Frodo was, how Pippin always hesitated before speaking and clung, almost fearfully, to Aragorn, Faramir, and Gandalf, and how Sam always looked around fearfully, constantly frightened that someone was going to try and hurt Frodo. Merry himself knew that he had changed. The hobbit he had been a year ago would never be so aware of his surroundings, nor would he look at an individual and take notice of what weapons they were carrying, and where their armour was at its weakest.
Thinking about the changes since then brought Merry to a frightening realisation. Both he and Pippin were not dressed in the clothes they had been wearing, but instead oversized sleep shirts that obviously belonged to an adult hobbit. A quick look at Pippin's arm, and the burn scar that blemished the skin there told Merry that, although they might look younger, the scars they had gained lingered on. Whoever had changed Pippin into the nightshirt he was wearing would have got a nasty surprise. At least, Merry reasoned, he himself did not carry many scars on his skin from his journey; save for the scar on his forehead from the day Boromir had died. He carried no visible evidence of his encounter with the Witch King on the battlefield before Minas Tirith.
As Merry studied Pippin his keen hobbit hearing picked up the sound of soft hobbit feet approaching the room, before the door creaked open and a hobbit entered. Merry felt his mouth got dry. Yes...it was certainly Bilbo...although he was far younger than Merry ever remembered him being, even taking into account the Ring and how it had extended Bilbo's life.
"Hello," Bilbo greeted, "It is good to see you awake...you had us all very worried. I do not believe we have met before...Bilbo Baggins at your Service."
Merry hesitated...he could not give his true name, Bilbo had many connections and relatives in the Brandybuck family, and with things as strange as they were, Merry did not want to cause trouble by declaring his last name.
"Merry Underhill, at yours and your family's. This here is my young cousin, Pippin Underhill." Merry answered.
"Underhill...Underhill...I do not believe I know of many going by that name," Bilbo pondered.
"You wouldn't," Merry answered, "We're travellers...our home lies to the north of Bree...near Chetwood."
"You are far from home," Bilbo replied in surprise, "how are you feeling? You were both very cold when I found you outside my door, and it has been two days since then. You have both been very ill, but I've had young Ruby Marshbank up here and she had a look at you both and thought that, with a little rest and a good fire in the hearth to warm your fingers and toes, you would be fine."
Merry blinked. Ruby Marshbank had been the resident healer of Hobbiton back when Merry had been in his early childhood, although she had held that position for decades before that. She had kept up her trade right up until her death, at the grand age of 105 years old; in the same year that Pippin had been born, when Merry had been a lad of only eight years.
"Much warmer than I did," Merry answered Bilbo's question politely, "we are both very thankful for your hospitality...we lost our way in the snowstorm...we were trying to get to the inn at Hobbiton."
"Well, you are in Hobbiton, but not at the inn," Bilbo gave a thin smile, although it did not reach his eyes, which Merry realised, were shadowed and saddened. A more thorough glance made Merry realise that Bilbo was obviously strained, looking thin and drawn.
"Tell me, Mr. Baggins...What is the day...I am afraid we've been travelling so long we've quite lost track of it."
"Indeed, it is the morning of the fifth of Astron (April) of the year 1332 by Shire Reckoning, although it is so cold that you could be forgiven for thinking it is Yule still."
Merry nodded, his suspicions proving to be correct, The winter of 1331 and 1332, by Shire Reckoning, had been the year of the Fell Winter, when many hobbits had died from the cold, starvation, illness, and wolf attacks, although if Merry remembered clearly from what he had learned in his history lessons, by late Astron conditions had begun to ease.
"The winter has been harsh at our home as well. Pippin and I...we lost our entire family...between freezing to death and the wolves."
"There have been heavy losses here as well. You have my deepest condolences...I had wondered what two hobbits as young as yourselves were doing out and about alone so far from home." Bilbo sighed, gently patting Merry on the shoulder. Merry bit his lip, remembering that both of Bilbo's parents had died during the Fell Winter. Bungo had died of illness early on, and Belladonna had been slain by a wolf not long after Yule, leaving Bilbo alone in Bag End.
"I am sorry to hear that there have been losses here as well," Merry mumbled, "my cousin and I had hoped that the Shire would be fortunate enough to escape the cruellest elements of this long winter...it pains me to hear that this is not the case."
Bilbo gave Merry a thin smile, "You two look like you've had a hard time of it...you will be safe here."
Merry nodded, curling up beside Pippin and drifting off to sleep, oddly reassured by having Bilbo watch over him, just like Bilbo had the first time Merry had been young. The last thing Merry was aware of was of a gentle hand tucking the blanket tighter around him, and of a soothing hand combing back his hair, before he drifted off into oblivion.
THE HOBBIT
Bilbo watched the two sleeping fauntlings with a sad look on his face. He sat in the chair beside the bed, and sighed. It had been apparent since the first moment that he had dragged them both over his threshold that the two young hobbits needed help, and Bilbo was not one to turn away someone who needed his help...especially now. He had nothing more to lose, now that his parents were gone, so he had not thought twice about bringing the two young hobbits, Merry and Pippin, into his nice, warm, hobbit hole and out of the cold. It wasn't as if he didn't have the room, or the money, to take them in.
Still, the boys' story saddened Bilbo. It was obvious from the scars that they carried that the boys had gone through a tough year (Ruby had sounded confident when she had told Bilbo that none of the scars were over eight months old). They had no parents, or other family, and it sounded very much like they had fled to the Shire out of desperation. It was slightly curious that they had made it to the centre of the Shire without encountering anyone, but Bilbo wasn't going to dwell on it. The people of the eastern part of the Shire had been the worst hit, and many hobbits had fled to relatives in Hobbiton or further west, or they had barricaded themselves in the great smials of the Tooks and the Brandybucks, finding some semblance of security against the wolves and the cold in numbers and the vast underground hobbit holes and tunnels owned by the two largest families in the Shire.
Looking at the pair, Bilbo felt some of the loneliness that had consumed him ever since his mother's death ease, as if having the two younger hobbit's in his home had eased the darkness in his heart, lighting a little flame that flickered, getting brighter and brighter the longer the two younger hobbits stayed in Bag End. Even now Bilbo knew he would be saddened to see the two young hobbits leave, and Bilbo knew he could not, in good conscience, permit their departure until such time as the weather had greatly improved, and the boys had some kin or close family friend, willing to take them in. They were both far too young to live alone, and Bilbo refused to expose the pair to the sort of pain that he felt...the loneliness that had crept into his heart as the realisation dawned on him that his precious mother was dead, slain by the wolf that had ambushed them as they tried to get to the Smial of the Tooks. Bilbo had barely escaped with his life, saved just in time by the wizard Gandalf.
Gandalf had left the Shire not long after Belladonna's funeral, as far as Bilbo knew, off helping others struggling in the depths of the foul winter. The wizard had said something about journeying west to see how the dwarves of the Blue Mountains fared. Gandalf's friends, the Rangers of the North, however remained, patrolling The Shire's borders and protecting the Hobbits from another invasion of wolves...something the residents of the Shire were very much thankful for, even if they didn't trust the tall men and their mysterious ways in the slightest.
"Know this, you poor boys," Bilbo said in a soft voice, so as not to disturb the two sleeping hobbits, "If you should desire it to be so, you have a home here. The door of Bag End will always be open to you."
A.N. A little note regarding dates...In this fic the Fell Winter was during the winter of 1331 and 1332, by Shire Reckoning (TA.2931) According to Tokein's time line it was actually during 1311-1312 SR (TA.2911). This doesn't actually play into the story at all, and you can ignore the mentions of the Fell Winter and it could just be a particularly bad snow storm that Merry and Pippin landed in.