A/N: So, these first few flashback chapters are shorter, but they will get much longer as the story goes along and Brittany is able to remember stuff better :) Also, this chapter is kind of sad, and I'm going to apologize ahead of time for that. Sorry... But I hope you like it anyways. Sorry for any mistakes, and leave a review so I know what you think.

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, anything related to Glee, or My Name is Memory. They simply gave me the inspiration to write this story!

1020

Constantinople

I don't remember many of the events from my first lives; the edges of my memory are a little foggy and unclear from that time. It's similar to living with blurry vision—I can recall the big moments and concepts from my early years, but some of the smaller, more important and beautiful details are lost in the unfocused facets of my unconscious. Sometimes when I dream, I find myself watching scenes from my soul's youth, and in those moments, I can make out familiar faces and moments of my childhood. But when I wake up, my oldest memories are often hazy again, and I always feel frustrated because of my brain's mortal limitations.

What I can differentiate and recall, I keep closest to my heart. Those few memories and events are important to me because they were crafted only shortly after my soul was born. They hold the truth about my birthplace and origins. And in a world in which my soul never dies, they represent the only place that I can truly call home.

I was first born in Constantinople, the great capital of the Byzantine Empire, in the eleventh century. My first life was extraordinarily short, but the events during the last couple of months before I passed have always stuck with me, even to this day.

It was a harsh and cruel first life in the beginning, but I didn't know any better. As a young slave girl, I was bought and re-sold maybe fifty times throughout all my childhood. I was never given the opportunity to settle down and grow comfortable in one place for too long. I was a belonging, a possession—used and then thrown away.

And it was such a shame because Constantinople was one of the most beautiful and magnificent places I remember living. In those years that I recall, I've never seen a city so busy and prosperous. There was money practically seeping through the great walls of the city, but I could never get my hands on any of it. I wasn't worthy of anything, really.

My parents were gone; I assumed that they were dead, but I didn't know for sure because I didn't remember them. There was no way to find them even if they were alive. I was a helpless and ill-fated girl in the throngs of a bustling and carefree society, and I truly believed I was going to be subjected to misery for the rest of my life.

Fate had other plans for me, though.

When I turned twelve, my owner at the time—a plump and rich merchant whose name I've forgotten—sold me to one the emperor's magistrates, and I was moved into a large estate near the Great Palace about a week later.

I remember how drastically my life changed the minute I stepped through the walls of that new home; I was taken care of, fed, and clothed. The magistrate didn't treat his slaves as harshly as I was used to, and after a small length of time, I found myself feeling almost comfortable and relieved for the first time in my life.

Though, the first day was intimidating and nerve-racking because I was in a new place and surrounded by completely new people. After living in so many different households and environments, it would make sense that the novelty of constantly moving to a new home shouldn't have affected me very much, but it did. Every time.

I was scared and nervous, just like any other twelve-year-old would have been in my position.

But, I quickly developed a relationship with one of the older slave girls, and things soon started to fall into place.

Her name was Anna, and she was about five years older than me. I'm surprised that I can recall her name in that life, but for some reason it has never departed from my memory. I can say with absolute certainty, that she was the only person in my first life whom I actually cared for.

Anna was a welcome and interesting surprise that seemed to calm my jitters. She wasn't like the other slaves, and there was something unusual about her that drew my attention. Like, how she always acted superior to the other girls, yet I could see the fear and uncertainty of inadequacy behind her dark brown eyes. Or the way she tried to act indifferent and harsh around everyone, when I knew that she truly cared for the rest of us. And most importantly—me.

I didn't know what she saw in my young, adolescent self, but from the very first day, she took me under her wing and taught me the ropes of living and serving for the magistrate. She took care of me and managed to save me from a lot of inevitable mistakes and embarrassment. She treated me like a sister which I was very grateful for, because for the first time ever, I felt like I had a family. She became my family.

Though, Anna didn't dispense the same care and liking to the rest of the slaves, like she did towards me. I didn't question her choices and motivations at first, but I remember wanting to understand the reasons behind her actions. Because, despite the level of affection she showed me, she was almost too cruel to the others.

I knew she cared about them, they were her family after all, but she didn't display her positive emotions very well. Something had happened to her which had resulted in her strongly unkind disposition.

There are only a few specific memories from that life in which I can recall exact conversations and exchanged words I shared with others. The ones I do remember have been recovered in dreams, and I have written them down so I don't risk forgetting them again.

The day Anna told me about her past was one of those memories.

It was about a year after I had moved in, and we were lying in our beds, staring up at the ceilings while the soft snores of the other slaves drifted through the cramped room. Usually, I listened to her fall asleep and waited until her breathing evened out before I shut out my thoughts and tried to enter a dreamless sleep. That's how I knew she was awake too, because her breathing was still a little frantic and unsteady.

"Anna?" I turned towards her bed next to mine and found her deep, pensive eyes trailing over my face.

There was always something about the way she looked at me—like she was too old, had seen too much, and was afraid for me. It sent shivers up my spine when she looked at me like that.

"Yeah?" she whispered back, and I closed my eyes at the sound of her voice. Even her voice offered a comfort I couldn't account for.

I hesitated because I didn't want to upset her. She was so much older, wiser, and intimidating, and I didn't want her to treat me any differently than she did. I loved her—she took care of me and watched out for me. I didn't want to loose her. But my curiosity was not very subtle.

"Why do you treat me differently than the other girls? I don't understand why you're so mean to them…"

There was no immediate response, and the silence seemed to penetrate the room with an uncomfortable stillness. I don't know how long I laid there waiting for her to answer me.

If it weren't for the moonlight shinning through the open window a few feet from our cots, I wouldn't have seen the single tear fall down her cheek. But my eyesight was very good and I was pretty observant, so I didn't miss it.

"Anna?" I finally spoke again, and when my voice rang through the room, I heard her soft sniffles hidden beneath it. She was crying, and I didn't understand why.

"Are you okay?" my voice was shaky as I continued to watch her with sympathetic intrigue.

"Uhhhhh…" she sniffled and wiped away the single tear. "Yeah, I'm okay."

The following moment seemed to drag on forever, and when I thought she wasn't going to say anything else, I turned over and snuggled into the thin cloth beneath my lean body. I wasn't expecting her to crawl into the bed and wrap her arms around me in a vice-like hold, like she did. She had been literally shaking as her tears soaked through the thin fabric on my back, burning through my skin.

And as her head fell into the back of my small frame, I froze.

"I won't let them hurt you," she sobbed quietly into my torn shirt.

I remember being so puzzled by her reaction and words. She was crying and saying things that didn't make any sense to me, and all I could do was lay there and let her hold me—like it gave her an immense amount of consolation.

Eventually, her sobs died down and she was breathing in even breaths. I thought she had fallen asleep, but then her words chimed through the air, and I almost jerked.

"You just remind me of her… so much," she mumbled into my shirt. I was even more confused, then.

"Who?" I squeaked.

"Catherine," Anna answered after a few seconds, her voice extremely hoarse from crying. "She would be the same age as you now."

Something clicked inside my head in that moment, and I realized that she was talking about her family. Or rather, her sister—her real sister; it must have been. I gulped behind the hands that were curled up to my mouth.

"What happened?" I managed to say and fell silent, as I waited for her few leftover sobs to trail away so she could talk.

"She was killed three years ago…by a foreign tradesman," she stopped to take a deep breath and nuzzle even further into my skin. "She was just a little girl, and he took her from me," she buried her face and began crying again.

I'd never felt as helpless as I did in that single moment. She was clinging to me like I was the only person who could give her the one thing she wanted so desperately.

But, I wasn't her sister. I was only a child who had happened to find her. And she was my best friend and I loved her so much, but I couldn't do anything for her to make her pain go away. So, I just let her cry and hold me until she tumbled into a defeated slumber.

During the following weeks, I watched as her harsh exterior stripped away. I couldn't tell if she was trying to please me, even though I hadn't asked her to, or if she had finally reached a point in which she didn't have the energy to be antagonistic anymore. After all, I had slowly noticed her composure slipping away. Talking about her sister must have released a lot of unwelcomed memories. I was so glad that she had finally confided in me, though.

We grew much closer as well, and I found about a million other things about her personality, mannerisms, and speech that I learned to love. If that was even possible.

Sometimes, I felt her gaze linger on me, and when I found her eyes from afar, she would always give me the same sincere smile that unexpectedly made me giddy and sent my heart fluttering. She always had a strange affect on me that I couldn't understand, but I never thought too much about it.

And every night, she would crawl back into bed with me and hold me until we drifted off with her arms wrapped tightly around my torso, like I needed protection even in sleep. I gained a sense of security during those nights that left me feeling almost… happy. It wasn't a sensation that I was used to, but I learned to accept it with open arms when it came my way. And almost always, Anna was with me when it arrived.

Now, when I try and think back, I can't be sure if the feelings I developed for her were romantic in any way. It's so hard to differentiate because my love for her has been clouded with memories from more recent lives—lives in which our love was much less-innocent than in my first life.

I guess it really doesn't matter at this point, though. All that mattered was that my soul was being sewn to hers, slowly but surely, and by the time I died, our connection was irreversible and impossible to sever.

My death was unexpected and pitiless, and I still feel so horrible for leaving her when we were so young. It was even worse, knowing that she had already lost a sister so unfairly, and I was the only family she had left. So, I held on as long as I could out of sheer love for her, but there was only so much my mind could control over my weak and fragile body.

So, when the fever and plague caught up to me, I was already so overwhelmed with anguish, knowing that I was leaving her forever, that I didn't last very long. I simply couldn't take any more.

It was an antagonizing and slow death, and remains one of the most heart-breaking and painful in all of my lives. I think the emotions behind it, are what made it so much worse to bear. And I've died in many harsh and horrible ways. But, when I think back on all of them, only a handful occurred with her by my side, loving me until I drew my last breaths. And those were always the hardest.

Anna never left my side during the last few days of my first life.

And the image of her standing above me with a tear-streaked face, praying to wait just a little longer, has always been one of the first memories to appear in a new life. Usually, I remember during a fever; it's like the final straw, releasing a flood of previous lives' moments.

But unlike my other deaths, in which I knew about my memory and could give her condolence, I wasn't able to tell her that we would find each other again. I think that's what made that death so sad—that I couldn't give her the reassurance she was practically begging for.

Because, I didn't know that I would remember every moment we spent together in that life and the dozens after. And if I could go back in time, that would be the one thing I would do differently.

Instead of muttering that I was sorry before I closed my eyes forever, I would have told her that I would never forget her. Ever.