(I forgot to add the disclaimer on the first few. Obviously, neither Ru nor I own anything of the Twilight universe. If I did, I can assure you, I wouldn't be here right now. All of these characters belong to Stephenie Meyer. Copyright laws, blah blah blah...)
He had seen her only a second after he walked into the bar, and yet she was already walking towards him. In that one moment that his eyes locked with hers, several things inside of him happened at once.
She was obviously one of his kind. Her looks and scent aside, her gait was enough to tell him. As she moved towards him, it was like she was dancing across the floor to him. She moved with more grace than he was used to seeing from the vampires he encountered. The swiftness with which she moved and the way in which she carried herself was enough to break any ballerina's heart. He knew just by looking at her that she was the kind who could create poetry with the way she moved her body. Maybe her grace has something to do with the fact that she was about a full foot shorter than he. Or maybe her ethereal movement was to make up for her height.
But she was moving towards him, without hesitation, and he wasn't sure what to expect. All of his decades as a vampire told him that she meant to attack. He had been trained since his rebirth into this new existence to fend off attack, and he was taught always to win if it came to a fight. With the raging newborns, he had to win. If he didn't, he would be dead. They would advance with a daft ferocity, unrelenting, vile, like the angry brainless zombies in the scary films that played in the theaters. It was the exact opposite of how she approached him now. But that was all his past experience had to offer to explain what she was doing. She was making a beeline for him. He looked into her eyes, which were a peculiar dark amber color like he'd never seen on a vampire before, and saw something unexpected. It was as if she recognized him. He quickly replayed his entire century of memories as a vampire again in his mind, but he was sure he'd never seen her face before. It was rare that vampires ever forgot anything. Their minds were so expansive that there was room for infinity. Of all the names and faces he could recall, she matched none of them. But that look was unmistakable. It was like she knew him, like they were old friends. Like she'd known him for years. From his old life, perhaps? Back when he was still known as Jasper Whitlock? No, he was sure he'd remember her, even though the majority of his human memories were still quite hazy. When he had first laid eyes on Maria, Nettie, and Lucy, their beauty was unrivaled to anything he'd ever witnessed before. But this girl who stood before him was more beautiful than all three of them put together, and then some. He couldn't figure it out. He didn't know her, and yet she obviously knew him. And, though all of his experience told him that he should set himself in a defensive stance, somewhere deep inside he knew that she meant him no harm. Her eyes were alight with some kind of happiness and anticipation, as if she had been waiting for him.
But it was her smile that convinced him that she was not dangerous. It was a brilliant smile that lit up her entire face, even up to her sparkling deep amber eyes. Just for a moment, he was completely mesmerized in her beauty. He was used to seeing female vampires, but none of them compared to this woman who was making her way towards him now. He was aware of how ravaged he must have looked so close to her. The planes of her face were flawless, every feature perfectly placed. And there he stood, his entire body marred by scars, which would stay with him for the rest of his days. And unlike the human eyes in the room, this angel's deep amber eyes would see every detail of the scars of his past with perfect clarity. He must have looked like a monster.
All of that processing took only a half of a second. And it was only a hundredth of a second later that his power took over.
Since the night he was changed into what he was now, every moment of existence had been spent in darkness. He was born to fight, and he was reborn to fight. Nearly a hundred years on the earth, and the only strong emotions he had ever experienced was a consuming fire of hatred, and then the desolation and emptiness of depression. The night was all he knew.
So it amazed him that now, standing in this hole in the wall bar in Philadelphia, it was as if the sun was rising. That's what it felt like, at least. The emotions radiating off of her were like nothing he'd ever felt before. It reminded him of one day when he was just a boy, growing up in Texas. He had been laying in an open field in mid-July. There were huge fluffy clouds and giant thunderheads all over the sky. There was one such thunderhead in front of the sun, shading the entire field. But the warm breeze was pushing the cloud away. He watched as the shadow moved across the field, chased away by the rays of the sun. It was coming towards him. He closed his eyes, a deep shade of green then, and waited. He felt it first on the tips of his fingers, because his one arm had been stretched out above his head. The warmth stretched down the length of his arm and then finally hit his face. Those his eyes were closed, he was still able to see how the rays lit up his eyelids, and the warmth spread across his face, down his body, and down to his bare toes. Now, standing in this bar nearly a century later, he had the same sensation, and it was all emanating from the woman now standing in front of him.
The night was all he had ever known. He had never rested once since he was created. His kind didn't need to sleep. All of his nights bled into each other, as if he had been awake for one night that lasted a century. But suddenly it was as if the sun with all its light and warmth was rising over the horizon in his nighttime. A midnight sun. It lit up his darkness, filled it with…hope? Yes. For the first time in about ninety years, he felt hope. It radiated from her pale skin, and on to his. With hope so strong, there was no way he could doubt it. She could only be sincere. Her hope, it was for him. For them together. He knew it, he felt it as his own. It staggered him with its power, and in that moment he knew that some how, this was supposed to be.
And the entire thought process only took him a few seconds. She covered the final steps with her dancer's gait, the smile spread across her face, and came to a stop only an arm's length away from him. She spoke to him then, and her words came out like sweet music in his ears. She said that he'd kept her waiting for a long time. She'd been waiting for him? But he'd been traveling for years. How would she know he'd be here, in this random bar, when he'd only made the decision to come here a few minutes ago? But even though it was strange, his etiquette forced him to put primary focus on her words, and not on the meaning behind them. He dipped his head and a crooked grin spread across his face. "I'm sorry, ma'am." He still had a bit of a southern twang in his smooth voice, but with every year he was away from the south, it faded more and more. When he lifted his eyes again to meet hers, she had offered him her hand. He furrowed his brow for a moment, but before he was entirely sure of what he was doing, he felt his own hand in hers. And when they touched, there was electricity between them, a static charge that hung in the air. It was as if they were two halves that were now whole again. Her skin was soft under his touch, though he knew that to any mortal here it would feel hard as stone. He didn't know where she was going to take him, but knew only that he trusted her, because he could feel that she trusted him. And so, however peculiar the situation seemed, he would follow her wherever she would lead him.
