AN: I actually can't even begin to express how happy it makes me to write this again. Last time I wrote this, I only used first person which felt super limiting. I also felt like I over-explained everything single action. I think I'm better, I hope you do too. Obligatory I do not own Twilight.

Song of the Chapter: I've Just Seen A Face - Jim Sturgess (Beatles Cover)


Chapter 2 - I've just seen a face...

The good thing about the Forks High population not being as big as Phoenix, you don't have to squeeze through high school sweethearts making out in front of her locker, or walk agonizingly slow behind the group of jocks taking their dear old time to get to their classes.

Let's add that to pros column in the Forks vs Phoenix showdown, Lily jokes to herself as she easily gets to her locker and deposits her biology and English books in it.

The day has gone by relatively quick, for which she is thankful for and eager to get to lunch. She had skipped brekfast this morning - her nerves not letting anything look appetizing. One more period and she'll be reunited with Bella for lunch - for which she is also thankful for. No one wants to sit by themselves at lunch, though she's sure people would come over to stare at the shiny new student.

The students of Forks High have been very welcoming. Extremely curious, a bit starey, but welcoming. Faces smile at her when they see that it's one half of the Chief's daughters walking through the halls. Lily politely smiles back at them, a blush filling her cheeks at the attention. While she's grateful for the hospitality, the attention is a little overwhelming. She thinks back to Eric Yorkie, who had discovered that he shares most of his classes with Bella and took over as her designated tour guide after History. Her sister's eyes pleaded for help as Lily waved them on and went to her Bio class.

While it is a little annoying to have started a new school in the middle of the year, she feels that she's picking up pretty quick. In fact some of the stuff they were learning she found she had already learned in Phoenix. She is also very happy with her interpreter, Miss Collins, who looks to be in her mid-twenties and has a gentle smile. Lily had an older interpreter back in Phoenix who was a little rough and liked to sign a little too fast for Lily to write notes. Miss Collins goes at her speed, which she appreciates.

As soon as she steps foot in the Calc class, everyone stops what they're doing to turn toward her. Wonder when that is going to stop, she feels intimidated as this is a senior class and she is only a junior. Math has always come to her naturally though as it's a universal language. While she loves to read, grammar is so boring and she finds that she hates reading books assigned to her and writing reports on it. It takes all of the fun out of reading and immersing herself in the story. Math just makes sense to her. Ignoring the stares the best she can, she walks over to the teacher's desk, Miss Collins already there waiting for her.

"Ah, Miss Swan? I'm Mr. Duncan," she nods as he hands her the Calculus textbook, "Here you are. Take a seat at any available desk."

Lily signs thank you to him and scans the room for a spot. The desks are single desks, they are longer tables with two chairs meaning that she'll have a desk mate. As she sees an eager looking boy in the back giving her a smile and a motion for her to sit next to him, she decides to sit at the only open table, hoping that she'll get lucky that there's an odd number of people in the class.

Glancing at the work on the board and the instructions to open to page 394 and reads the page over, waiting for class to start. She takes out her old math notebook from Phoenix and smiles when she sees this is work she has already done earlier in the year. Piece of cake, she thinks before she feels the heavy weight of eyes on her. This wasn't the typical stares she has encountered through the day, this was someones eyes piercing her and she glances up.

Woah.


Jasper walks through the hallways next to his "twin sister" Rosalie, heading to their Calculus class. What was this, his third time going to high school? Fourth? Who knows anymore, the years blended together, he wasn't sure why they had to continue on this charade of going to high school, but it was mostly to keep up appearances for Carlisle. The patriarch of the Cullen family saved him, sheltered him, taught him, guided him throughout the new beginning of his existence and he will be forever grateful to him and Esme. He was grateful to all of them, Alice especially.

He remembers like it was yesterday, her approaching him in that diner.

"You've kept me waiting long enough," she joked, sliding in the booth across from him, not even flinching at his red eyes. It was then he saw that her eyes were a burnt copper, vampire. She was small, very thin, her brown hair cropped short to her head and covered by a hat. She smiled a friendly smile and her emotions showed nothing but ingenuity, no sign of deceit. He knew that truly evil people didn't believe that they were evil, they didn't understand that they were doing anything wrong.

"Pardon?" he asked, completely confused and still on his guard. He glanced around waiting for this to be some kind of trick, perhaps she was working with Maria, the thought made him growl...

"Jasper, right?" he nodded and she smiled, "I'm Alice, and I am here to lead us to our destiny."

"Pardon?" he asked again, causing her to let out a tinkling laugh. "What do you mean, 'our destiny'?"

She smiled and shrugged, "You'll just have to wait and see."

So he followed her out of that diner and on the path to their destiny, to live peacefully with the Cullens - the worry of war, the worry of Maria dragging him back to Mexico long gone. The worry of being a monster long gone. They had found the Cullens two years after that day, stumbling upon them while they were on a hunt. Carlisle and Esme had immediately welcomed them with open arms and he had found himself feeling something for the first time in his existence - peace.

Life with the Cullens was easy, adapting to their diet was a little more complicated. While he was an empath, he could felt everyone's emotions. When he was a newborn vampire, before he had control over his gift, emotions would drown him till he felt like he would explode. Maria liked exploiting this as he would be absolutely lethal on the battlefield in this state. When that would happen, he was a snarling, growling, hungry death machine. "My Warlord," she would purr in his ear.

Emotions are potent and they are not simple. People feel happy, they feel sad, they feel angry, they feel depressed, they feel happy and sad, they feel lonely and depressed, they feel angry and happy, they feel lust, they feel hungry.

The last was the worst for him as even feeling humans hunger can affect him.

He had once brought this up to Carlisle when talking about his control. When humans feel hungry, they are ravenous for pretty much anything that's edible to them. When vampires are hungry, they are ravenous for the one thing that is edible to them. Blood. "Of course, you are feeling their hunger, which can cause you yourself to feel hungry," Carlisle theorized.

This made it hard to be around humans, feeling a combination of vampires hunger and humans hunger could send him into overdrive, but he was determined to adpat to this lifestyle. While animal blood wasn't satisfying, it was sustaining and he couldn't feel animal emotions when he fed - that's all that mattered.

Vampires were affected by humans scent they way a hunter tracks its prey. His siblings had it a little easier as they could hold their breath through the day, Jasper had it a little harder, which gave everyone the notion that his control was just not good because of all those years fighting the territory wars and hunting anything he wanted.

Most of the days at school, he would have to focus on blocking out students emotions and hold his breath, which wasn't comfortable at all. Vampires didn't need to breathe, they were essentially dead so they had no use for it. He once had a debate with Emmett and Edward about whether or not a vampire could survive in space. That debate had ended in a stalemate when Emmett started getting a little rowdy - 'we could totally test the theory out! Who wants to take a road trip to NASA?!' - and was dressed down by their mother, 'Emmett McCarty Cullen, you are NOT going to the moon, do you understand me?'

Jasper smiles thinking of Esme in full mama bear mode, even she could scare him when she's that angry. A door to the outside swings open as a student comes running in to get out of the cold, he allows himself to take a deep breath through his nose. He allows himself these small breaths knowing that the scents from outside could overpower any scent of students and their blood.

But just as it swings closed, all of the students scents in the hallways are overpowered as the air blows a lingering scent right to his nose.

What the...

He stops walking immediately and keeps taking greedy breaths through his nose. What the hell is that? he thinks as his brain goes into overdrive, that scent is so sweet, so wonderful. Where is it coming from?

"Jasper," Rosalie hisses low, finally noticing that her brother had abruptly stopped in the middle of the hallway, taking deep breaths through his nose. "What are you doing?"

He looks entranced, "Rose, do you smell that?"

"Human," she confirms after taking a few careful breaths. "Come on, we have to go-

He shakes his head, cutting her off. "No, it's not just human, it's...it's amazing..."

Rosalie is thoroughly freaked out and tries to snap him out of this, grabbing his arm. "Jasper, stop breathing and lets just go to cl-"

Jasper shakes himself out of her grasp and takes off, following the scent. He needs to follow it, needs to find whatever the source is, it's incredible, amazing, perfect. He's a mindless zombie, walking through the halls, ignoring Rosalie's hisses to stop and come back. He's trying to follow it, feeling like a hunting dog trying to track down a kill. He doesn't want to hurt whatever smells like this though, he...is not exactly sure what is going on, or what he will do when he finds the source, but he needs to. His heart, not having pumped in over a century, feeling like it is pounding out of his chest, constricting tighter and tighter.

The scent takes him all the way, funny enough, to his Calculus class, right where they were headed.

Stopping at the desk, he finds the source in a human sitting at his desk. A new human because he cannot recall seeing her around school this year. What the hell? he asks himself for what feels like the millionth time, before the human glances up and all coherent thought is banished from his brain.

She is...everything.

Her eyes are chocolate brown framed by dark lashes, her hair the same color as her eyes falls to her mid chest in soft waves while her gently arched eyebrows disappear under the bangs covering her forehead. Her perfect face is heart-shaped, her nose slightly slanted with full, kissable lips.

It's then he feels her emotions - at first she was nervous, that emotion sailing under all of her other emotions, then she was confused at him staring, then she was surprised, then she felt attraction to him, but there was something there in her emotions that really caught his attention. It was so soft he almost missed it - relief and calmness. He feels his chest swell knowing that he made her feel like that and he did it without his gift. This girl, this human, is everything to him right now. He's never experienced this feeling toward anyone - human or vampire.

Unfortunately his moment with her is catching the attention of all the other humans in the class, students starting to whisper to each other. Mr. Duncan notices as well as he approaches him.

"Mr. Hale? Is something wrong?"

"I..." he feels reluctant to tear his gaze from the girl, but hears Rosalie hiss at him that he needs to leave the classroom now. "I need to go to the nurse," he finally turns toward Mr. Duncan, "I'm not feeling well."

Mr. Duncan nods, handing him a hall pass and motioning for him to go. "Okay, class, let's get started. Who wants to talk about limits?"

Jasper speeds out of the class as fast as he humanly can, walking right past the nurse's office and outside, desperately needing fresh air. He needs to clear his head and find out what just happened. Why he was so attracted to a human's scent and then he saw her face and...

Well, he's never seen anything so comforting, so wonderful, so beautiful...

The moment replays over and over in his mind, her warm brown eyes meeting his for the first time, her sweet face surprised at finding him looking at her, and then that lovely blush coloring her cheeks. Who is she and what is going on?

He makes sure he's out of sight of any classroom windows as he stops at the trees shading the outdoor lunch area. Taking a couple of deep breaths, he centers his mind and calms himself down - his dead heart no longer feeling like it was about to jump out of his chest.

"Jasper?"

Alice.

"What happened? I didn't see..." she trails off, looking concerned as she lays a hand on his shoulder. Her eyes start to glaze over as she searches through her visions, trying to find an explanation for what is going on. She was in class when she was hit with the vision of Jasper encountering the human girl before it went black. She then saw another vision when he left the class, finally making the decision to leave. She had swiftly made an excuse to leave class, feigning having "monthly issues" to her female teacher who immediately understood and allowed her to leave.

"I..." he starts, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. "I don't know, Alice."

Hearing the door open and close, they turn to see Rosalie and Edward heading toward them, Edward concerned reading Alice's thoughts and visions while Rosalie just looks angry.

"Jasper, what the hell just happened?" Rosalie asks, glancing back and forth between Alice and himself. She had rushed out of class, giving Mr. Duncan the excuse that she was concerned and going to check on her twin brother, the man falling under the buxom blondes charms and allowing her to go.

"The girl?" Edward asks, putting together Jasper's thoughts and Alice's visions. "Her scent?"

Jasper nods, "It was...amazing. But I didn't hunger for it. I didn't want to kill her or drink her blood. I don't know what..." he trails off, shaking his head.

"Did I miss the meeting?" Emmett comes rushing over toward them, his usual mischievous face looking uncharacteristically serious and concerned. Seeing his usual stoic and composed brother jumbled, he places a large hand on his shoulder. "You good, Jas?"

Jasper nods, looking between Alice, Rosalie, and Edward. "That's never happened before, not even when I was in a feeding frenzy."

"No that wasn't blood lust," Rosalie says, frowning as she thinks. "The only time we react like that to someone's scent is when..."

"Is when...?" Jasper urges her to continue, but she looks confused.

Edward finishes for Rosalie, having read her conclusion in her mind.

"Is when we meet our mate."


AN: Thanks for reading.