A/N: Sending all of you my heartfelt gratitude for reading:)
Stories
"When we met, you said it was a pleasure to 'finally' meet me, and then Paul pointed out last night that you were smiling at me when I walked out of the trees, before I even looked at you. Did your little pixie see me coming?" Leah asked Jasper.
She smiled a little when she felt his surprise. It wasn't the first question she'd planned to ask, but when she opened her mouth, that's what came out.
"No, actually, she didn't. Alice can't really see the wolves. Sometimes she sees brief flickers of the two of us when she looks at our future, but on the whole, the wolves make her blind. I have a feeling she'll see you more clearly the more time she spends with you, as familiarity is a huge component of her gift," he explained. "But I did have knowledge of you before we met. Not for very long, only since the family returned to Washington."
"If Alice didn't see us meeting, how did you know I was your mate?" she asked curiously.
Jasper explained about suddenly feeling the tugging on his heart, and that he'd eventually followed the pull all the way to the Quileute treaty line, then he paused for a moment and thought about how to describe Peter's gift that wasn't a gift.
"My oldest friend in this life has a weird quirk that he doesn't consider a gift but that the rest of us do," he said with a smile. "I'm not real sure how to describe it, to be honest. He just gets information, knowledge, about things. Most have to do with himself, his mate, or me, although he's gotten a few things over the decades about Alice. Not many, but a few. Much of it has to do with our safety and security, but not all," Jasper shrugged. It definitely wasn't an easy thing to describe. "He can't ask for specific knowledge the way Alice can search for a specific vision, which is why he doesn't consider himself gifted in the typical way other vamps are gifted. The information comes to him, not the other way around."
Leah quietly absorbed all that for a moment. Did all vamps have extra 'quirks' like Jasper, the pixie, and… "What's his name?" Leah asked when her thought trailed off.
"Peter," Jasper smiled. "And his mate is Charlotte. Peter and Charlotte Whitlock."
Leah's eyes went a little wide at that. "Was one of them a human relative of yours?"
Jasper shook his head. "No, they took my name after they'd been vamps for a number of years. The reason for that and my connection to them are all part of the same story."
"They were your friends before you met Alice? I know you'd been around for a while when you met her, and I'd wondered if you had friends before her."
"I was born in 1844, turned in 1863, and met Alice in 1948, so I'd been alive for a little over a century and a vamp for eighty-five years when we met," Jasper explained, smiling a little at Leah being shocked all over again by how long he'd been around. "I've essentially had two completely different lives since I was changed. I came to know Peter and Charlotte because of the life I lived for the first seventy-five years of my second life. I was actually the one who changed them," he admitted quietly.
"You created new vamps?" Leah asked in surprise.
"I did," Jasper nodded, his expression more solemn than Leah had ever seen it. "I changed many people during that time. Peter and Charlotte are the only two still walking the earth. I have no interest in lying to you or trying to keep ugly truths from you, but I'll warn you before I begin that my story is not a pleasant one. I had a much, much different start to this life than the rest of the Cullens, and even to Alice, who is the only other member of the family Carlisle didn't change."
Leah carefully set her mug down and then held Jasper's hand in both of hers. She didn't need to be an empath to see that he was worried about how she was going to react to the story of his long second life. "You told me in the car that being mates and imprints means this is an equal partnership. I can't guarantee that I'm going to like everything you tell me, but I can guarantee that nothing you say will make me walk away from you. There may be things you find difficult to talk about, just like there may be things I find difficult to hear. But we're partners, Jasper. Nothing you say will change that."
Jasper gave her a small smile and sent her some of his gratitude and appreciation. "Okay," he nodded, then launched into his story. "In order to understand my entry into this world, you need to know that there are places where the life span of my kind is measured in weeks or months, and not centuries."
Leah listened quietly as Jasper told her about the Southern Wars and his first seven and a half decades as a vamp. She wasn't sure if he was intentionally projecting his emotions or if she could feel them more clearly because she was holding his hand, but it made for a much greater depth of storytelling. Rather than a straight recitation of events, she could literally feel everything he felt about what he was sharing with her.
She knew he could feel her emotions as well, so she tried to keep them steady and calm. She wasn't always successful. She'd known that the Cullens weren't typical vamps, her tribe's legends made that pretty clear, but she was still shocked that newborn armies were a thing that existed in the world, and that their sole purpose was to gain the territories with the best 'feeding' opportunities. That was a pretty awful concept, and she couldn't rein in her shock.
She could feel Jasper's sincerity when he explained that his creator had lied to him about their world. He genuinely believed it was a choice between constant war or a final death, and Jasper became a skilled warrior and did what he had to in order to survive.
His creator, Maria, sounded like the worst kind of person. She was harsh and cruel and gifted at manipulation, and Leah felt both sadness and anger at the way she'd essentially turned Jasper into her perfect weapon.
"There's not much about that time that I'm grateful for, but there are a few things that I'll never regret," he explained with a small smile. "One is that it gave me the ability and skill to protect those I love against virtually any threat. Another is Peter, which then led to Charlotte, two of the biggest gifts I've been given in this life."
Leah sucked in a sharp breath as Jasper told her about the very first person he loved in his second life. It took her a few moments to untangle all the emotions she felt from him, but they combined to make her chest fill with a kind of warmth she'd never felt before. There was an unmistakable deep love, gratitude and appreciation, respect and affection.
"Can I interrupt for a second?" she asked.
Jasper nodded with a smile. "Of course."
"Your emotions… they're much deeper than anything I've ever felt. Is that because all vamps feel things more intensely, or is it because you're an empath?"
Jasper thought on it a moment before answering. He and Peter had talked about that on more than one occasion. "I think it's probably both. My kind definitely feels things to a much greater degree than humans, but being an empath probably also plays a role. My gift is an additional sense I use to navigate the world, so emotions are the lens I see the world through. Like I said before, it can be both a gift and a curse. Living in a violent war zone for seventy-five years as an empath was the worst kind of torture. It also made feeding on humans difficult. It wasn't quite so apparent when I was in the south, as I was constantly surrounded with every negative emotion you can imagine," he explained quietly, gently squeezing her hand when he felt her sadness for him. "Once I was away from the south, it become far more difficult. I was living a mostly peaceful life, so the negative emotions that came from killing any sentient beings took a far greater toll."
"How did you leave the wars behind?" Leah asked. "How did you find out Maria lied to you about the world?"
"In the early 1930s, I changed a woman who became the catalyst for Peter's freedom, and eventually my own as well," Jasper answered with a soft smile.
"Charlotte?"
"Charlotte," Jasper nodded, then went on to explain that he'd helped Peter and Charlotte escape when Maria ordered him to kill her after her newborn year was up. "The two of them quite literally mean more to me than my own life. I knew I would be facing Maria's wrath and risking my final death by letting them go, but their safety and happiness was worth far more than my own. And letting them leave meant losing the only happiness I'd found in this life, so it didn't feel like I actually had anything left to lose."
Leah was filled with so many emotions as Jasper continued that she felt tears welling up in her eyes. There was so much love as he spoke about them, but so much sadness and despair right alongside it. Leah shared his gratitude and relief that Peter came back for him five years later and Jasper left the south without a backwards glance.
"Peter's the one who told me to head to Philadelphia five years after that," Jasper smiled. "I listened, of course. Peter's gift had saved my ass more times than I could count, so I walked into a diner to escape the rain in 1948 and found a tiny little pixie waiting for me who greeted me like her long-lost family. She was unlike anyone I'd ever met, unlike any vamp I'd come across. She didn't have the instinctive fear and trepidation at seeing my scars, she was just thrilled that I'd finally walked through the door."
Leah laughed as she imagined Jasper's reaction to meeting Alice - the guarded and mistrustful warrior meeting the pixie with a bright smile and a bright personality to match. "What did you do?" she asked.
"I've promised Alice she can tell you this part of the story, so I'll just tell you that it was only my gift and Peter's that kept me from turning right around and walking straight back into the rain," he laughed.
Leah smiled that after eighty-five excruciatingly long years as a vamp, Jasper finally had three people he loved in this world, and three people who loved him in return.
Jasper took a deep and unnecessary breath. He'd told Leah all about his time with Maria and she was still sitting beside him and holding his hand.
"I'll probably have more questions after this has some time to sink in, but thank you for sharing all this with me," Leah said quietly.
Jasper gave her a soft smile. "I'll answer any questions you have honestly. And not only about my history, but about nearly everything. I can't promise that you'll like all my answers, but I can promise that I'll always be honest with you. The only things I'm not willing to share without permission are the stories of the rest of my family. Those are their stories to tell, not my own."
Leah nodded her understanding. Losing virtually all her privacy when she became a wolf meant she had a newfound appreciation for those who respected people's privacy, and she was glad Jasper was the kind of person who wouldn't share personal details about anyone else's life.
Looking at her watch, Leah realized it was almost eleven. "They're about to close, you wanna head out? My story isn't nearly as long as yours," she teased. "I can probably fit it all in on the drive back."
Jasper laughed and hauled himself to his feet. "Yeah, let's go."
Once they were on the road, Jasper driving Leah's car so she wasn't distracted while she talked, Leah reached for his hand again. "I don't know if you were doing it intentionally or if it was because I was holding your hand, but I liked being able to feel your emotions while you told me your story," she admitted.
Jasper smiled at her. "It was both actually. Rather than constantly projecting my emotions onto you, having skin contact means they're shared almost without conscious thought. I figured if I can feel your emotions, it's only fair that you feel mine."
"Look at that, you just gave me an excuse to hold your hand as often as possible," Leah laughed. "Thank you, I appreciate that. So. Where should I start?"
"I've found that the beginning is generally a pretty good place," he said with an amused smile.
The first seventeen or so years of Leah's life sounded pretty idyllic to Jasper. She had parents who loved her, a baby brother she adored, a tribe of people she was deeply connected to, and a huge swathe of both forest and shoreline that served as her playground. The bitterness didn't start creeping into her voice until she told him about the cousin she considered a sister and the boyfriend she started dating her freshman year of high school. Emily Young and Sam Uley.
"Sam was a year ahead of me in school, and he disappeared in his senior year. When he turned up two weeks later, he was a different boy to the one I knew and loved. He was angry all the time and there was a level of rage in him that hadn't been there before. We'd been together for three years at that point and we'd talked about getting married after I graduated, so I tried to give him space to work out whatever was wrong. I didn't know what else to do, because he refused to talk about where he'd been or what happened. Emily came down to visit a few months later, and it was a decision that changed all of our lives. Theirs for the better, mine definitely for the worst."
Jasper kept a tight rein on his emotions so that Leah wasn't bombarded with his anger as well as her own as she continued her story. They were holding hands so some bled into her, but not the full extent.
"Sam came over the afternoon Emily arrived, but he left my house without a word shortly after, then came back again a few hours later after Emily had gone to the store with my mom. He broke up with me," Leah said in a flat voice. "He wouldn't tell me why, he just said there was no hope of us getting back together and I needed to just let him go. He was gone from La Push for three days after that."
Jasper listened with a combination of sympathy and outrage as Leah explained that Sam had imprinted on Emily, and that he'd spent the three days he was gone from the Reservation up in Neah Bay - two days waiting for Emily to return home and then another day talking to her.
"And he didn't give you any explanation?" Jasper asked. "Not about becoming a wolf or about the imprint?"
"He wasn't really allowed to," Leah answered. "Spirit warriors were just a tribal legend, and the very real existence of the shapeshifters is a secret from the rest of the tribe. Only the elders and the wolves know the truth," she explained. "Having said that, the elders encouraged Sam to tell me as much as he could to try and minimize the fallout. But after telling Emily the whole story, she initially told him to leave, that she wouldn't hurt me by being with him. Because he was struggling to get his imprint to accept him, he didn't want to add to the mess on his plate by trying to explain things to me."
"What a dick," Jasper muttered under his breath.
"Yeah, he really is," Leah laughed. She couldn't honestly say her bitterness and anger at Sam and Emily were gone, but it had definitely diminished since she imprinted. "I won't go into everything that happened, but Emily said something one day that threw Sam into a rage, and he phased too close to her and she got badly hurt. She was in the hospital for a while and is scarred down one side of her body, including her face. After that, she stopped protesting and eventually moved down to La Push to live with him."
Jasper turned to her, his eyes wide with shock. "She caved after her disfigured her?" he asked incredulously.
Leah shrugged a little. "I guess violence from the man who claims to love you is forgivable when it comes at the hand, or claws, of a supernatural being," she said dryly.
Jasper huffed a few times in outrage. Not at Leah, just at the whole fucked up scenario. Sam being a supernatural being made that violence so much worse in a way, because Emily had no hope of ever being able to protect herself against him. No human could. Also, Leah had explained imprinting in detail to him, and she'd told him the wolf becomes whatever the imprint wants or needs. If Emily had told Sam categorically that she wanted him to leave and never come back, if she was genuine in her refusal to hurt Leah by being in a relationship with him, he would've had no choice but to do as she asked.
"How the fuck does Sam think he has any right to try and dictate anything about your personal life? I get that the Alpha thing means he has control over your life as a wolf, but your relationships? Your imprint? What fucking bullshit," he scoffed.
Leah smiled a little that he was so outraged on her behalf.
"You know I'll never take advantage of the imprint, right?" he asked as he turned into the Cullen's driveway. When he felt Leah's confusion, he explained it more clearly. "From the way you described imprinting earlier, I'm aware that the imprint holds a degree of power over the wolf, which I'm honestly a little uncomfortable with. My connection to you shouldn't mean a loss of your free will. I'll never use the imprint as a way to coerce you into doing something you're not comfortable with. I don't want our relationship to have a power imbalance. We're equals, and I will always see us as equals."
Leah smiled a little wider at that. It was a concern that had quietly lingered in the back of her mind. "Thank you."
Jasper parked her car and turned to face her, holding her hand in both of his, just like she'd been thoughtful enough to do for him while he told her his story. "I know the day you phased for the first time, but I'm not sure how long after Sam and Emily getting together that was."
"About six months," Leah answered. "They became an official couple about six months after he broke up with me, and I went through my first transformation about six months after that. It was a pretty miserable year. I thought it was my fault that Sam had ditched me for Emily, that there was something I did or didn't do that made him choose her. I was angry and sad and hurt… just a mixed-up jumbled mess. I isolated myself a bit, spending most of my time with my mom and dad and Seth. Billy Black and Charlie Swan would stop over at least once a week and nudge me to do things, which usually meant watching sports or going fishing," she laughed.
"You've spent a lot of time with Chief Swan?" Jasper asked in surprise.
Leah nodded. "He and my dad and Billy have been best friends since before I was born. It's one of the reasons I'll never be a Bella Swan fan. I love Charlie and I don't like that she stopped spending summers with him just because the weather in Forks wasn't to her liking, and I absolutely hate the way she treats him now that she lives here. He was so fucking excited when she said she wanted to move here, but they spend virtually no time together. She made it clear that sports and fishing weren't things she was interested in, and because she has no hobbies except spending time with her boyfriend and tossing Charlie aside, he can't exactly offer to spend time doing things together that she enjoys. I guess he could've sat with her and stared vacantly out her bedroom window for a few months after her boyfriend of only six fucking months broke up with her. I was with Sam for three years and didn't turn into a zombie when he broke up with me, and Charlie had been a husband and father when Renee left him, taking Bella with her. You think he turned into a nonfunctional zombie? Please," she scoffed. "Do you know that he used to spend almost every evening at our house or the Black's, but he now spends most evenings at home on the off chance she might change her mind and decide to grace him with her presence and watch a game with him?" she asked angrily.
Jasper gently squeezed her hand. "Before you go on, I should probably tell you that a majority of my family is home and can hear you right now. I don't say that because I think you should censor yourself, because I definitely don't. Nor will your opinion of Bella diminish any of the affection they already feel towards you. I just want you to be aware, that's all."
Leah shrugged and nodded. "My feelings about her aren't a secret, and if I didn't like her for a stupid reason, maybe I'd keep my opinion to myself, but it's not a stupid reason. She's spent more than a year causing a man I consider an uncle more hurt and worry than she needs to. I get that there are some things about her life that she has to keep secret, but that does not mean she has to hurt him in the process. The fact that she's hightailed it out of Forks twice because of your brother - once with a whole lot of cruel words and once with no fucking words at all - makes it hard for me to ever imagine enjoying her company."
Jasper knew about the way Bella justified her escape from Forks when James was after her, the whole family did, and they had all been a little confused that she hadn't come up with an excuse that didn't cause her dad immense pain.
Leah huffed in annoyance. "I think she's selfish and pushy and rude. A feeling that's shared by most of the pack, by the way. Jacob's the only one who can stand her," she said with a heavy eye-roll.
Jasper already knew Seth and Paul weren't all that fond of Bella, but he hadn't known the other wolves shared that opinion. With the things he was learning about Charlie Swan, a man who was close to multiple Quileute families, and Bella's treatment of him, he could understand their antipathy.
"Anyway. Moving on," Leah said with a little laugh. "During that same time period that Charlie would occasionally force me out of bed way too early to go fishing with him, I still hung out with Paul sometimes also. He was happy to park himself in the living room and watch TV or movies without forcing me to talk about anything. When he disappeared for a few days it felt like an awful repeat of Sam, and I was prepared for him to stop talking to me after he turned back up. He didn't, of course," she said with a smile. "He was different in some ways - physically and emotionally - and he had less free time than he'd had before, but he never stopped being my friend, never stopped hogging the couch and my mom's baking."
"Okay, the fact that you feel both fondness and irritation at that means I have questions," Jasper laughed. "Or one question, really. Is it the hogging of your mom's baked goods that annoys you?"
"Look, you've never had my mom's cookies, Jasper," Leah defended herself with a laugh. "The woman has won actual awards for her baking."
"That good, huh?"
"Better. Whatever you're imagining, it's better," she said seriously, echoing his earlier words about coffee in reverse.
"It would have to be," Jasper laughed. "After my coffee experiment, I refuse to imagine eating human food."
Before Leah could respond, the clock on her dash ticked over to midnight and almost immediately, the Cullen's front porch light turned on and off a few times. And because the house was gigantic, the front porch light wasn't a single light, but about four sconces mounted at intervals along the outside of the house.
"Real subtle, Carlisle," Jasper laughed as Leah started giggling.
The front door opened and Carlisle peeked his head out with a smile and a wave. Jasper knew his antics had less to do with his dad jokes from earlier and more to do with wanting to make Leah laugh. None of the family were purposefully eavesdropping to be rude, but they couldn't help overhearing a lot of what Leah had said. Both Jasper and Leah laughed again when Esme popped her head out to say hello and then yanked Carlisle back inside.
"I like your family," Leah said with a smile. "I'm slightly surprised by that, I never thought I'd actually like any vamps to be honest, but I really do like them."
"I'm glad. They like you, too. Most of them, anyway."
Leah waved a dismissive hand. "That's cool, I don't mind Edward not liking me. It's definitely mutual," she laughed. "Will you be upset if I ask to postpone the telling of the end of my story? I got virtually no sleep last night and I'd rather not drive home in an exhausted ball of tears after telling you about the worst day of my life."
Jasper gently squeezed her hand. "I wouldn't be upset even if you decided to never tell me," he said quietly. "I meant it when I told you the choice to talk will always be yours."
Leah smiled and closed her eyes, focusing on her gratitude and appreciation while pushing her other thoughts to the back of her mind for a moment. She felt Jasper's surprise, and she opened her eyes to see him watching her with a warm smile. "Did it work?" she asked hopefully.
"Was that your way of sending them to me?" he asked.
Leah nodded. "Yeah, but hopefully without overwhelming you by 'shouting' them at you. So did it work?"
"It did," Jasper nodded. "It worked really well. The gratitude and appreciation came through perfectly with nothing else getting in the way. I know it was deliberate, but I'm not sure what you did."
Leah was ridiculously pleased with herself. "I pushed all of the other noise in my head to the back of my mind so there weren't other emotions fighting to be heard, and just focused on what I wanted you to feel. The first time I tried sending you emotions, I imagined myself mentally shoving them at you. This felt gentler."
"It was. It was like you stripped everything else away momentarily, leaving me with just what you wanted to share with me."
"How cool! We can communicate silently now," Leah laughed.
"It'll still be easiest with skin contact, so we should probably hold hands as often as possible just so we're communicating in the most efficient and effective manner," Jasper said, his face completely serious. It wasn't entirely convincing, though, because they were still holding hands, so Leah felt his amusement.
"If we must," she said with a deep and dramatic sigh, smiling at Jasper's deep laugh. After untangling her fingers from his, Leah hopped out and walked around to the driver's side, where Jasper was already standing and holding the door open for her. Which was completely unnecessary, because car doors stayed open all on their own nowadays, but Leah figured manners weren't a bad thing. In fact, maybe she could get Jasper to teach Paul some. And maybe Seth. Those two could use the occasional reminder that manners existed.
Without stopping to overthink it, Leah wrapped her arms around her imprint and hugged him. She was thrilled when he not only didn't pull away, but wrapped his arms around her and pulled her a little closer. Leah took two sneaky breaths of his scent, then pushed up on her toes to leave a quick kiss right at the corner of his mouth.
"Thank you for the best and last first date of my life, Jasper," she said, making him laugh. "I had a really good time, even if some of the conversation was a little heavy."
"Last first date, huh? That suits me perfectly," he said with a smile. "Now I just have to make sure your last second date goes equally well."
"I have no doubt you'll be successful," she smiled. "I'll talk to you tomorrow. We can make plans for you to teach me to kick my best friend's ass. And maybe you could teach him all about those manners you have in spades."
"I'd be happy to do both," he laughed as she got in her car. "And Leah, thank you for the best, first, and last first date of my life."
Leah gave him a warm smile. "I'm honored I got to be your very first date. It's pretty fucking amazing I actually get to make that claim," she laughed and shook her head. "Night, Jasper."
"Goodnight, Leah. Drive safe."
"Goodnight, other Cullens!" she called out her window as she turned her car around, then laughed when an assorted chorus of goodnights rang out from the house.
Jasper stood in the front yard and watched Leah drive away, and when he heard her tires hit the main road, he turned to face the house with a smile. Not three seconds later, he was laughing at the bottom of a pile of four Cullens and one Hale.
There were things he'd need to speak to the family about before the night was over, but for the moment, he let himself just soak up the joy and happiness they felt that he and his mate had taken their very first steps into a new life together.