Disclaimer : Twilight is property of Stephanie Meyer

No beta-reading

Foreword : Being French, I don't know to what extent the Civil War has left traces in the USA, and maybe there is a widespread unspoken in some Southern states that I am not aware of, but it still seems curious to me that the character of Jasper can be presented as a former Confederate soldier who fought in the Civil War without any trace of critical judgment on his role and involvement during that period. In Twilight, it's really done hastily in a way like 'he was young and brave, he enlisted before he was of legal age and was immediately promoted to Major because he was ultra-charismatic. He was heroic and saved many civilians before being bitten by a vampire. The end.' It's a bit too easy as a summary, and if I'm not asking for a pamphlet on the possible racism of people who lived in a completely different time, when one decides, like Stephanie Meyer, to depict a 'good' Confederate soldier, there is still a bias that needs to be acknowledged, and - it seems to me - one should still try to address the question of racism (if only to say that it was not a relevant issue for most white protagonists of that time) and delve into the reality of the historical context from which the highlighted characters come.

It seems doubtful to sweep under the rug all potentially dubious aspects of the past of a Confederate veteran of the Civil War. It seems logical that Jasper, who is empathetic and has had nearly ninety years to reflect on his actions, would have something more critical/relevant to say about his own history than 'I was a brave soldier, those were the good times'... especially since it is repeatedly emphasized in the books that Jasper is passionate about history and philosophy. Anyway, I'm not a specialist in American history, so my perspective may be off the mark, but it seems to me that we can't avoid some reflection (even vague) on slavery if we're writing a fic about Jasper's human past, so that's what I tried to do. Very tricky subject ^^"

I hope you enjoy this chapter ! Good reading ;)

Journey to the End of the Day – Part 1.

I killed 29,173 people.

« The world is what it is, which is to say, nothing much. [...] Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only goal worth struggling for. » Article published in the newspaper "Combat"*– Albert Camus.

Jasper sent the largest wave of calm he could summon... which wasn't much given his precarious emotional state.

He had to admit that the Cullens had quite the composure: even though he could sense the terror, anger, sadness, and shock coloring their emotions, none of them had a real recoil or had truly started growling or making any attacking moves during his abrupt introduction. Esme made a strange sound between a cry and a stifled sob, Emmett eyed him with suspicion, as if trying to determine whether he had just made an especially morbid joke, Edward and Rosalie flinched, tensing to the extreme as if they were about to leap into an attack but ultimately stayed perfectly still. Carlisle, on the other hand, didn't even flinch. Jasper was genuinely impressed by the man who, despite his emotions being an absolute chaos, managed to maintain a poker face.

He could have started his explanations more gently, but he wasn't one to sugarcoat things. With Alice's demand for honesty, there was no good way to begin his story. Delivering his "kill count" seemed inevitable if he were to tell the truth. So might as well start with that. The advantage was that nothing he would say afterward could sound much worse. Though... it seemed like wishful thinking given the enormity of what he had to confess. It would be a miracle if the Cullens really considered welcoming them into their home once his story was over.

"I was born in a small town near Houston, Texas, in 1844. My mother died of cholera when I was seven, my father was a schoolteacher in the White Oak bayou, inheritin' a small piece of cultivable land upon the death of my great-uncle. Our finances were modest, but my father's teachin' job and the few vegetables he managed to grow were enough for our sustenance and that of my younger sister, born a few months before my mother's death. We had an old plow horse that my father had kept from the time he served durin' the Texas Revolution. I had learned to ride it at a young age and became a skilled rider. My father, of course, made sure I received a proper education. Although I dropped out of school at thirteen to work on railroad construction sites to earn additional income for my family, I was literate and had access, unlike most of my farmer friends, to numerous books on history, literature, or politics, giving me enough knowledge on various subjects to hold my own in discussions with people from the upper class. When Texas seceded in February 61, I was almost a man, my sister had just died in painful circumstances... my father was grievin' and old enough to be exempt from conscription, which was fortunate given his stance on this conflict.

Jasper vividly recalled, eighty-nine years later, his father's hard and haunted gaze, clouded by alcohol and grief as he announced his departure. The plug of tobacco he had thrown at him as a kind of strange parting gift and the words he had spoken in a weary tone as he crossed the threshold.

"Don't pretend y'all are leavin' to fight for your values, for your personal glory, or for the honor of the South. Y'all are leavin' to escape this house and not have to remember her."

While he struggled to remember most events of his human existence, and most childhood memories were shrouded in a thick fog, his sister's face on the day of her death and his last conversation with his father seemed etched into his memory indelibly. The words haunted him even today like a curse.

"My father was a cultured man, quite progressive for the time and the region, well before Lincoln's election; he openly declared himself in favor of abolition. In peacetime, such opinions were tolerated in salon discussions as mere character weaknesses or the quirks of intellectuals. As the Southern states gradually declared secession, things changed, the memory of his past reluctance about slavery and his lack of frank commitment to the Confederacy attracted the ire of part of the community. I felt I had to try to restore the family's honor, if only to protect it from potential reprisals, and I announced to anyone who would listen my firm intention to enlist in the defense of my country even before reaching the legal age. The truth is that my sister's death had left a big void, and nothing held me back in White Oak anymore. My views on the righteousness of the war were, moreover, very different from those of my father. I didn't really care 'bout the issue of slavery: we were rather poor, as I mentioned earlier, and we never had servants, but even if I wasn't particularly comfortable with the idea of men owning others, I was not opposed to maintainin' the system of serfdom. I thought the Southern economy relied too much on the exploitation of slaves for federal abolition to mean anything other than its decline and lead to the deterioration of our living conditions. I considered blacks as inferior beings, and while I didn't rejoice in their sufferin', I was indifferent to it. I thought the end justified the means, and I was perfectly willing to take up arms to maintain the status quo and protect my homeland. I'm not proud of my opinions at the time, but I guess I was a man of my time.

As he spoke of his past convictions, Jasper had unconsciously risen from the couch, as if to put some distance between him and Alice. In truth, so many years later, he didn't remember exactly what his motivations were, even though his justifications afterward seemed credible to him. Everything seemed blurry and distant. He remembered a pile of biographical elements, but the sensations and thoughts associated with them were like drowned in a mush. It was like an old man recounting childhood memories with a multitude of details: he half felt like he was telling someone else's story that he had learned by heart. He no longer remembered why with certainty, but he remembered having been genuinely seduced by the ideal of the Confederacy and had been disdainful and indifferent to the fate of his contemporaries whom he considered without value. He now paced the room with a stiff air, continuing to speak, eyes lost in the void.

"I enlisted in the Confederate army on my seventeenth birthday. I had a certain charm, was very tall, and looked older than my age. Recruiters easily overlooked my lack of summons and directly integrated me into the third cavalry battalion. From the first assigned tasks, I was able to distinguish myself with my ridin' skills and my understanding of strategy: the Confederacy was in its infancy, struggling to structure itself. Most of my comrades, like me, came from modest backgrounds, and very few had received sufficient education to understand a battle plan and organize supply or civilian evacuation. I was spotted by a passing colonel as I tried to convince my superior to slightly modify his tactics for a better angle of attack; he then saw me fight and was impressed by my courage. He immediately promoted me to the rank of Major, and I wasn't even eighteen yet. Considerin' that my actions place me on the wrong side of history, it's quite inappropriate to rejoice in this fact, but I was probably the youngest Major in U.S. history. Durin' this period, as a soldier, I saved many lives, especially those of civilians, but I also committed atrocities, endorsed inexcusable things, and, of course, killed many Union soldiers..."

Jasper paused for a moment, looking up at Rosalie, surprised by the sudden flash of rage that had just surfaced in her emotions. Her eyes were icy, but her expression was strangely neutral, even though he could feel visceral hatred boiling within her. He decided he would analyze her reaction later, wanting to continue his narrative quickly now that he was getting to the part about his long involvement in vampire wars.

"One evenin' in '63, as I was finishin' organizin' the evacuation of the wounded from the city of Galveston, which we had just liberated from Union occupation, a group of three young women approached me. They were alone in the middle of the night, and they were breathtakingly beautiful. I thought they had lost the head convoy headin' to Houston, so I offered to accompany them to the unit handling the transportation of civilians... they started a conversation I didn't quite understand, where they seemed to be amusing themselves at my expense. My instincts told me to be wary of them, but I ignored it. My chivalry pushed me to refuse to see these lovely ladies as a threat before it was too late. Not that it would have helped if I had run away. The youngest and frailest of the group, who turned out to be the leader, approached me, sayin' her name was Maria. She said she hoped I would survive, found somethin' 'captivating' about me, and needed a tall and brave officer to help her wage 'her war.' Then she bit me. Durin' the three days of transformation that followed, I reckoned I'd done gone straight to hell and was bein' consumed by flames... part of me figured it was some kinda punishment for my deeds. When I woke up, Maria was there. She explained what she had done to me and the new world she had offered me: she 'fed' me, which turned out to be a strange and painful experience for me, but I'll come back to that later…"

Jasper didn't know how to broach the subject of his empathetic power without alienating the peaceful Cullen family directly.

"Maria told me her story. She was Mexican and had been transformed with her biological parents in 1816, right in the middle of the War of Independence, by a vampire who presented himself as her companion. Together, they formed the Monterrey clan for a few years, occasionally facin' other vampires to maintain control of a small area north of Mexico. They were only four and had chosen to settle in a highly coveted territory. When Benito created the first known army of newborns in 1820 and embarked on his conquest of the South, other clans replicated his technique on a smaller scale. The Monterrey clan was swept away one night by an elderly vampire couple accompanied by only three newborns in 1821. Maria was the sole survivor and remained alone for a while, grievin' and refining revenge plans, having no reason for her immortal existence and wantin' to reclaim the territory that had been taken from her family. Durin' the purge carried out in 1830 by Caius and the Volturi army, she was a solitary nomad and was left alive…"

Jasper sighed and stopped pacing, trying to focus to regain some composure and send a small wave of calm to the Cullens before delving into a more disturbing part of his story. He felt his audience captivated, even though Rosalie's hatred continued to pierce him, and Edward's emotions had been tumultuous since he began his story. Jasper wondered what mental images he was conjuring for the telepath since he started speaking. While he could, through reflection, blur his thoughts and make them incomprehensible to a third party by mixing in some Spanish with Navajo code, talking about his memories made the maneuver impossible, and he was afraid of what Edward might now see in his mind.

"I don't know the information you have 'bout the Southern wars and the armies of newborns, but the thing to remember is that the vampires who settled south of the Texan border chose to disregard the non-exposure rule set in the year 623 by the Volturi after they reduced the Egyptian clan to ashes. South America is a vast, wild territory, mostly populated by a poor and superstitious population. It was easy for a nomad or a small clan to settle for a few months in an isolated village and reign in terror in broad daylight, using the residents as cattle. Vampires who decided to embrace this lifestyle right quick came into conflict with each other, fearing that the too massive presence of immortals on this part of the American continent would result in a significant waste of human lives and eventually attract negative attention from the Volturi. The absurdity of it all: Benito originally created a vampire army to kill his competitors and avoid attractin' attention or havin' to share his 'livestock.' Other clans were afraid of being invaded and destroyed and, in turn, created their own newborns, leading to an exponential growth in the number of vampires present in the South American territory, daily wars between immortals, and the massacre of over 800,000 humans in less than a decade. When our leaders moved to put an end to the joke, they killed all the newborns present, as well as all the mature vampires associated with them. It left only 'bout ten isolated vampires in South America; most were from clans destroyed before the Volturi arrived, and after a few years of relative calm, the thirst for blood and the desire for conquest that had driven them for so long took over. Some of them allied and started makin' armies of newborns again, more intelligently and discreetly than in Benito's time: the armies rarely had more than 10 individuals, they avoided massacring humans in broad daylight, and the fights took place at night."

Jasper let himself be enveloped by the wave of comfort, concern, and love that Alice silently sent him from the couch. He could never understand why on earth the universe had crossed his path with someone as good and pure as Alice. A little induced miracle. Again, he focused his attention on Carlisle, looking him straight in the eyes.

"In '58, Maria had teamed up with Nettie and Lucy, survivors of clans that had formerly controlled North Texas and Arkansas. When they met me on the night of the evacuation of Galveston, they had formed a small army with four newborns, all men with military trainin'. They planned to retake Monterrey from Antonio's clan, a nomad who had created a garrison of 7 soldiers. They needed additional newborns but were afraid to produce more as they already had difficulty managing the herd they had. When I woke up, everything was quite confusin' for a few hours. I was scared, angry, and thirsty. Feeding had been painful and terrifying. Reckoned it was some kind of psychological backlash and that it was a remnant of my human moral scruples preventin' me from enjoyin' blood as much as I should have."

Jasper had a very cold smile as he shook his head, but a strange aura of shame and despair seemed to emanate from him.

"But I was already under Maria's charm, galvanized by her thirst for conquest and fascinated by the immortality she had offered me: she had an incredible charisma, and she asserted that, as a creator, she had the right of life and death over her creations. She announced that she had made me into some kind of superhuman, that vampires were living gods destined to rule the earth, and she had chosen me to be by her side and help her take back her country and the land that rightfully belonged to her. I immediately pledged allegiance to her and promised to fight under her orders and assist in organizing her army. When it was time to meet my new brothers in arms, there was a brief but brutal clash durin' which I eliminated Maria's former favorite and easily established myself as the most skilled vampire in the clan. The others strangely submitted to my will, acceptin' my orders without question... after a week of plannin' and creatin' two additional soldiers to strengthen us, we marched on Monterrey and easily destroyed Antonio's clan by takin' them by surprise. This battle resulted in only one loss in our ranks, and Maria was ecstatic to reclaim her family's stronghold. A week after the battle of Monterrey, she created 2 more newborns to extend our influence in the region and, accordin' to her, counter potential aggressors from San Antonio or Monclova. A week later, seeing that I had no trouble maintainin' order in the troop, now consisting of 7 newborns, Maria decided to add 3 more vampires, planning to eliminate the Monclova clan. Maria's suddenly swaggering attitude and the fact that she entrusted me with so much responsibility, considerin' I had just been recently created, made Lucy and Nettie nervous: they wanted to slow things down, fearing that the situation might become unmanageable and that the clan's rapid expansion would attract unwanted attention, even bring the Volturi back to the region. Their distrust real quick escalated, and two days before the scheduled battle in Monclova, they tried to assassinate Maria to take over the clan. Somehow, I had 'sensed' their betrayal comin' and managed to thwart their plan just before they could carry it out. I then executed them on Maria's orders, and, as planned, we set out to take Monclova. It turned out to be another success. We continued the battles and quickly destroyed several other clans, gainin' control of the entire northern part of Mexico. The factions in Sinaloa and the clans in Mexico and Veracruz were concerned 'bout this rise in power and created numerous additional newborns. And I'm only tellin' you'all 'bout the situation in the Mexican peninsula because it's the one I know best. From what I've heard, the situation was equally critical for most of the countries along the Andes mountain range. Between 1865 and 1944, the Southern War resumed in an even more ruthless manner than before the intervention of the Volturi. The only thing that saved us from a new purge is that the clan leaders were more cautious this time in the massacres of humans, coverin' up the explanation for the increase in mortality rates in the region due to the effects of the fourth cholera pandemic and the resurgence of typhus cases along the Colorado River in the late 19th century. Later, they attributed it to the result of various armed conflicts between cartels beginnin' to exploit cocaine deposits and exportin' them to Europe for 'bout thirty years. To my knowledge, even though the fightin' has calmed down a bit compared to my time, the region is still in turmoil today, and major conflicts between various groups using newborns break out several times a month. Ain't no peace possible for vampires created in the South. "

He was now coming to the most contentious part of his story; he had to talk about his power but didn't know how to address his gift without completely alarming his audience and risking a fight. He moved closer to the back of the couch, hovering behind where Alice was still peacefully seated, ready to pounce if he needed to protect her.

He had no desire to fight. Not with these people, not with anyone: eighty-seven years of battles and two years of tranquility with Alice had shown him that peace was one of the only things worth preserving in this absurd world full of cruelty.

Note :

* The quote from Camus at the opening of the chapter is taken from the article he wrote for the Resistance magazine "Combat", two days after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The reasons announced behind the creation of the first armies of newborns in Twilight leave me speechless... either there is something that escapes me, or the basic idea is very stupid/absurd ^^''

In this story, I'm trying to do a character study on Jasper. I don't know if I'm aiming correctly but (without even looking at the racialist perspectives underlying his Confederate past), I think that, given the historical context (Texan revolution less than 30 years ago, positions in favor of state independence, propaganda aimed at exacerbating the patriotic feeling of the time, etc.) he could easily be seduced by Maria's speech playing on the nationalist fiber and wanting to help her "take back her country". In the same way - and here we enter the racialist perspective - I think that someone who already adheres to a racist ideology can be more easily sensitive to the argument from authority according to which vampires are a superior race and that humans - substantially inferior - can therefore serve as livestock/source of food for them without this posing a moral dilemma.

For your information, there really is a Bayou called "White Oak" near Houston, I find the sound really very close to that of "Whitlock" which made me wonder if the name Jasper didn't come from hence the wink ;) See you soon for the rest!