The Strength of a High and Noble Hill (An Outlander Story)

Chapter 1: Birth

A/N: Given this chapter a little rewrite.

My username on Ao3, fanfiction.net and Wattpad are all the same while my Tumblr is legends-of-time

——

May 1744

He wriggles his toes, feeling his environment. He quickly realises how much his surroundings are constricted; his legs are tightly bound, and he is being cradled in someone's arms.

He tries to remember where he was, what he'd been doing, but the answers slip away too quickly, and he doesn't have the focus or energy to reel them back in. Giving it up as a lost cause for now, his mind stumbles to provide him with information for what is immediately happening to him instead. He is... being held in a weird way and he feels... smaller?

He grunts, frustrated, because he has enough brain power left to know that this doesn't make any sense. Yet, as he attempts to move, wiggling only slightly, he finds that he is indeed being held in the arms of somebody else. He tries opening his eyes, a task he's never found so hard before, only able to manage squinting in the end. The light, though dim, blinds him and he can only see the vaguest of shapes and colours.

He can only see a woman leaning over him as a blur of brown, white, and brown near the top. He blinks, hoping it will help clear things up, but his eyelids feel so heavy that he finds himself fighting to get them open again. He suddenly feels very tired, but stubbornly refuses, too confused to let himself fall asleep without knowing what is going on.

He eventually opens his eyes and sees the woman more clearly and realises she must be the one holding him. She's humming softly with a warm and happy smile. He can see that her skin is clammy and there are bruises under her eyes, the eyes that are amber, golden-brown as well as smoky topaz, but that doesn't dim her smile as she gazes upon the person in her arms. She's white and her brown hair surrounds her face in messy curls.

He tries to sit up, but his arms, no matter how much he wills them, remain stuck under the blanket. He quickly realises that he must be a baby from his size and the fact that whenever he tries to speak, it's whimpering that comes out causing the woman to shush him. The newly reborn person knows that this must be their birth mother and has obviously just given birth to them after an exhausting labour. So, to make her feel better and to show her his gratitude, he reaches out with his hand from the blankets he is wrapped in and grips a finger of the hand at the end of the arm that cradles him. He is rewarded with a beaming smile from his new birth mother.

"Claire?" A female voice calls. "How are you? When they had told me the circumstances, I feared the worst, Mon Cherie." He feels the ground shift beneath him and knows this other person had sat next to his birth mother – Claire.

Was that French? The reborn baby had detected what sounds like a French accent.

"Oh, Louise. He's perfect." His birth mother replies. He. He's pleased that he's still identifiable as male. Wait, still? Who was he...

He tries to raise his head and makes a frustrated noise as he can barely move. Claire readjusts him though, setting him in the crick of her arm and tilting him upwards slightly.

A face appears above him. It's another white brunette woman, beaming. "Oh, he's lovely. He's got his father's eyes and his hair." The woman's, Louise's, face then disappears from view, but he doesn't mind. He is happy to gaze at his mother instead.

"That's not a surprise," Claire replies.

"What are you to call him?"

"Brian. After Jamie's father."

Brian. Suppose that'll do...

"They told me he got arrested. In the Bastille for duelling." Louise says.

His mother frowns at this causing him to let out a cry of frustration and upset as he can't vocalise himself to make that frown disappears. His mother's frown goes however and turns into her smiling and shushing him.

"Why did you come here?" Claire asks then.

"Mother Hilegarde brought me here, to make sure you go home to recover after the birth." Louise says.

"Yes..." Claire murmurs, still gazing at the baby in her arms. "Fergus will be waiting..."

——

Brian drifted off soon after that conversation and wakes to a gentle rocking that abruptly stops. The surprise of it all causes him to let out a cry. How embarrassing.

"Is he alright?" A young boy's voice asks. Brian strains his head, trying to find where this voice comes from but all he can see is his mother from before and that they are in an enclosed space.

"He's fine Fergus. Just startled." Claire (mother?) reassures the boy. So, this is Fergus.

What sounds like a door being opened happens and his mother steps out with Brian in her arms and emerges into a brighter surrounding.

"Bienvenue, Madame."

"Merci, Claude," Claire replies. Brian lets out a disgruntled noise as he tries to see this other person but he can't move much being wrapped up in a blanket and his mother's arms.

Despite more squirming, his new mother clings to him more and wraps the blanket he lies in even more tightly around him. Brian realises it's no use getting free and resigns to grumbling to himself as he's brought inside a building.

——

A/N:

Don't worry, Brianna will still be in this story but her name will be different for obvious reasons.

The story's title comes from the literal and symbolic meanings of the name Brian.

French in this has been my own limited knowledge and Google translate.