Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the collective works of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga
Vampires
Louisa was pretty sure her brain had broken by that point. Jasper probably thought so too. She knew that her mouth was opening and closing, but she was unable to grab hold of one of the billion thoughts swarming around her brain for longer than a second, let alone formulate any of them into a question. Sure, she had been planning on talking to him, but not today, and certainly not now, here in her car.
Jasper, as if he were able to sense her confusion, gave her a placid smile. "Let me drive, and you can ask me anything."
That seemed to kick-start her brain, or at least give her a general direction of her thoughts to travel in. "I can drive myself," she snapped, buckling her seatbelt as if to prove her point.
His smile became amused. "I have no doubt in your abilities. If I thought you were incapable of driving, I would have stopped you before you made that very impressive U-turn earlier."
Louisa's jaw dropped open. "Were you following me?"
Jasper shrugged, clearly not understanding how creepy it was. Dear Lord, her kind-of-sort-of boyfriend was not only a demon but a stalker too. "I was on your way to your house. I really do want to talk to you." When she didn't reply, he tilted his head and watched her with curious eyes. "I am unsure if you are upset with me or exhausted from your previous adrenaline rush."
His statement only brought forth more questions. "How did you know that I had an adrenaline rush?"
He gave her another smile, this one close-mouthed and slightly strained. "Let me drive, and I will answer any questions you have for me truthfully," he repeated.
Louisa hesitated for the briefest of moments. What if this was only a ruse to get her to a secluded area where he could drain her dry and leave her body for animals? Should she text Dottie and let her know that if she didn't make it back tonight that she loved her and Jasper was a monster? But no, Jasper wasn't really a monster, was he? A demon? Probably. A stalker? Still gathering data on that one, but possibly.
She unbuckled her seatbelt and opened her car door. Jasper was already waiting next to it, holding out a hand for her. Louisa jumped in surprise and swivelled her head back to the now empty passenger seat and then back to Jasper. "Can you teleport?"
"Get in the passenger seat and you'll find out."
Years from now, if she were declared missing under mysterious circumstances, her family would say that her thirst for knowledge would have been her downfall. They wouldn't even be incorrect with that statement. But she couldn't just not know. She accepted Jasper's hand and allowed him to lead her to the passenger side and help her inside. He was sitting behind the steering wheel before she even had the chance to buckle up her seatbelt.
"Teleportation?" She asked when he started the car.
"No," he replied, adjusting the rearview mirror. "Just incredibly fast."
"How fast are we talking?" Louisa asking, sinking back into her seat and trying to not get distracted by Jasper's stupidly pleasant-smelling cologne.
"I've never measured how fast I could go, but it wasn't difficult to keep up with you going ninety miles an hour on the highway."
"It was only eighty," she mumbled.
She saw his eyebrows raise. "We can agree to disagree if it makes you feel better."
Louisa resisted the urge to slap him. Especially when he started to chuckle. Then she had to resist the urge to slap herself when she heard the sound. Kissing Jasper Hale would not be conducive to getting the answers she wanted, no matter how pleasant she thought it would be. Instead, she carefully considered her next question, deciding she might as well get the biggest out of the way. "What are you exactly?"
"I'm not a demon, though I'm sure Edward will try to argue about that," Jasper replied evenly like they were discussing a Spanish assignment rather than his species.
She was surprised by his frankness, though perhaps she shouldn't have been. He did say he would answer her truthfully. "So you are a blood-drinking..."
"Vampire is the word you are looking for."
"You're a vampire?"
"My family and I, yes. They're all very interested to speak with you. It's not often a human learns of our secret."
Louisa pursed her lips in frustration. "But you come out during the daytime? Shouldn't you be sleeping in a coffin or something?"
"If we could sleep," Jasper began, his voice taking on a playful quality. "It would be in a casket, rather than a coffin. It would be more comfortable, I think."
"You can't sleep?" She asked, swivelling her head towards him. "At all? What do you do at night?"
Jasper shrugged his shoulders. "We find ways to amuse ourselves," he said.
When he didn't feel the need to elaborate further, Louisa launched into her next question. "Okay, so you don't need to sleep. Fine. But you come outside during the day. Doesn't the sun burn you to death?"
To her surprise, Jasper actually chuckled at her question. "No, nothing so dramatic, though I can understand where the rumour originated from. What truly happens is far more ridiculous, but nobody asked for my opinion when vampires were designed. To understand what happens, you need to understand a little about our anatomy. When we become vampires, venom is injected into our bloodstream and systematically shuts down all organs in the body, leaving in place hardened cells. This," He said, releasing the hand on the steering wheel that was closest to her and extended it so he could stroke the exposed skin of her cheek. "Is why we feel cold. Our hearts are unable to beat, and if it could, there is no blood, only venom."
"Sort of like a corpse in rigour mortis," Louisa found herself saying. She cringed when she remembered that people usually found her knowledge of decomposing bodies morbid. Not only that, but she realised that this was probably an insensitive thing to say to her sort-of-kind-of boyfriend who was actually-totally-completely dead.
Jasper, at least, didn't find her comparison uncomfortable. "An apropos analogy," he replied. "Our skin is hardened during the change, becoming stronger, more durable. Few things can actually injure us."
"That sounds convenient," Louisa interjected. "So the sun is not one of these things?"
"No," he replied. "Instead, light diffracts through the venom in our skin cells, reflecting back like a prism."
It took a moment for Louisa to comprehend what he was saying, trying to recall how light behaves from her physics classes. "So you turn into a rainbow?" she asked, unable to keep the amusement out of her voice.
Jasper turned his eyes away from the road to give her a playful glare. "No, we sparkle."
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Louisa laughed. Particularly when her brain offered her a picture of Emmett glittering like a Swarovski crystal chandelier. Jasper didn't join in with her laughter, but she could see the corner of his mouth quirking up in amusement. And all of the sudden, she found the conversation became even more hysterical, and she found herself unable to keep tears of mirth from filling her eyes.
"Don't do that!" she wheezed between giggles.
To her astonishment, the feeling receded immediately. Wiping her eyes, she looked at his face, squinting in the dark car, her eyes narrowed in confusion. "Was that you?"
Jasper's brow was furrowed and Louisa had to fight the urge from reaching across the small distance that separated them to smooth out the wrinkles in his forehead. "It was," Jasper admitted. "I do not usually have an issue with controlling my power, though in large groups of people, I find myself easily influenced."
"Your power?"
"Yes," he replied. He wasn't looking at her, staring resolutely out at the road. "Some vampires have gifts, in addition to the enhanced senses, increased speed, and great strength. I am an empath. I can sense and influence the emotions of those around me."
Louisa's first reaction to this revelation was astonishment, though it quickly morphed into humiliation. "So that means you know what I am…"
"Feeling? Yes. Particularly you. You have strong feelings for a human." He finally shifted his yellow eyes towards her and gave her a pleading look. "Please do not be embarrassed."
She wasn't sure if that was possible. Did that mean he knew how incredibly attractive she found him? She tried to ignore the fact that he most likely knew how often she stared at his ass and focused on his words. "What do you mean by that? How are they stronger?"
Jasper's lips pursed as he tried to find the words to describe what he had observed, and had the situation been less serious, Louisa would have had a very difficult time refraining from kissing them. "They are very pure. Almost vampiric, in all honesty. Vampires feel much more deeply that humans do, and I would say that your emotions work in a similar way," he said slowly. There were was a pause as he weighed his next words very carefully, trying to phrase them so he did not alarm her. "Although I believe that I am particularly attuned to you, rather than you having a supernatural capacity for emotions."
A chill ran down her spine. She had no clue what he was talking about, but she knew, instinctively, that it was something important. She knew that whatever he was going to say was monumental, would impact her for the rest of her life, and if she were one hundred percent honest, she wasn't sure she was okay with this knowledge. "What do you mean that you are attuned to me?" she asked anyway, despite something in her telling her not to speak, that this was a stone better left unturned.
Jasper didn't say anything for a long time, continuing to stare out at the road, his fingertips drumming the steering wheel. "Vampires," he said slowly. "Have something called mates." The fingers stopped their beating, and Louisa could feel something in the car change. The air felt the way it often did, right before a thunderstorm: thick, charged. A small part of Louisa's brain wondered if the change in the atmosphere was due to Jasper's power, but the larger part of her consciousness was too focused on the young man across from her to ponder the idea for any substantial amount of time. "There isn't a human analogue for mates. It is not simply someone with whom you are in a relationship. It's stronger, more intense, instinctual. Permanent. There is nothing that you would not do for them to keep them safe, to make them happy. Meeting a mate changes a vampire: all priorities shift to the other, and you are no longer who you once were."
Has Louisa been her usual smartass self, she would have pointed out that this was the most she had ever heard Jasper speak at one time. But she as it was, she was confused, stressed, wrung out, exhausted. She barely recognised her voice when she said, "Why is this important?"
To his credit, he didn't pause and make her wait. When he spoke, it was in the same swift, matter-of-fact way he usually did, as if he were ripping off a bandage. "You are mine."
Louisa's blood ran simultaneously freezing as it boiled, her blood pressure skyrocketing and dropping at the same time. She felt dizzy, dissociated. She couldn't wrap her mind around what he was saying, grasp the implications of his statement. She leaned forward and rested her head on her knees in an attempt to ground herself. Her mind was racing faster than the manic speed Jasper was driving at, too fast for her brain to comprehend, analyse, and compartmentalise her thoughts and feelings. She was glad that Jasper seemed to respect her need to feel her emotions, instead of manipulating them into something more comfortable. When she next spoke, her words were muffled by her legs, though with his apparently superior hearing, he probably had no problem discerning her question. "How do you know?"
Jasper took his sweet time answering. "How do geese know where to fly each winter? How does a mother know the sight of her child? There are things that cannot truly be understood or explained," he said finally. "You waltzed into Spanish class at 1:17 pm on the 6th of September. I thought myself insane when I wanted to grab you and run. Especially when Rosalie began planning your murder. She is no longer planning your untimely demise, by the way."
"I should hope not. We're having a sleepover soon," Louisa replied. She took a slow, calming breath, and sat up. She stared out the window, watching the trees whizz by, her eyes barely able to make out their shapes. "What does this mean?"
Louisa wondered if Jasper was regretting his decision for an AMA session, but he never gave any indication that what they were discussing was uncomfortable for him. He had simply answered her questions succinctly with very little hesitation. That was why she was surprised when he sighed and ran a hand across his face. "This wasn't exactly how I planned on telling you this."
She turned to look at the man in the driver's seat. "But you were going to tell me?"
Jasper met her gaze, confusion flitting across his face. "Of course I was, Louisa. I didn't exactly want to keep this from you."
"When were you planning on it?" She couldn't exactly label her tone, but she thought it fell somewhere between challenging and pleading.
"When I was sure you wouldn't run for the hills. You still can, if you so choose. I won't bother you."
She considered this, trying to imagine a life where Jasper was not present. She knew that she wouldn't be able to cut him out of her life and ignore him as if they had never met. The only way she could avoid this was to move, run away and never see him again. Something hot and large settled in her throat and constricted her breathing. Why did the thought of abandoning him freak her out so much? Until three months ago, she hadn't known Jasper Hale from Adam. Now she was sitting in a car with a young man who she had been on one date with and he was telling her that he was a vampire and she was his mate, whatever the hell that entailed.
Funny what life threw at you.
"What if I didn't?"
The tone of her voice told him that she wasn't agreeing, not yet. She was critical: gathering data, weighing her options, and making an informed decision. Jasper respected that. "Then I will one day in the semi-distant future, change you into a vampire as well. Time is more difficult for me to judge, but I would most likely do it after you finish high school." When she asked him to elaborate, he sighed sadly. "I have existed for many years and will continue to do so for many more."
He launched into the tale of the boy that had once been Jasper Whitlock, born in Houston, Texas in 1844. A boy who loved to ride the horses and hated sitting through Sunday church. Who loved his parents, liked his classmates, and absolutely detested the bully Jeremiah Hayward, whose parents were friends with his so they always had to interact. A boy who, at seventeen, was not yet a man but desperately wanted to be and signed up for a war he didn't understand and was too young to be a part of. Who was a respected major in the Confederate army despite being a boy. The boy who was introduced to manhood during his first battle and thrown into a short time later when watched Jeremiah Hayward die from gangrene from an infected bullet wound, even after the surgeon had sawed off the ruined leg. A man whose life was ended in a cruel way by three beautiful women on the road to Galveston. Of the years and years and years the man had to endure the senseless violence of a new war that he hadn't signed up for. A story of a confused man, who was truly still a boy in many ways, who had run from the blood and the violence when he learned of something that wasn't just an existence, but a way of life.
Louisa listened to the story of Jasper Whitlock, trying to make sense of it. Sometimes she watched his face, but most of the time she stared out of the windscreen, watching as signs for Montesano, Nisson, Queets, flew by. Sometimes when he spoke, she felt her heart might actually break from grief. Sometimes she wanted to stop him and ask questions (and there were plenty she wanted to ask). She usually had to fight the urge to tell him to stop the car, only so could pull him to her chest and hold him. It was urges like those that truly confused her. So she stayed silent, listened, and wrote down everything he was saying in the largest book she had ever created in her mental library.
"My family drinks exclusively from animals. Rose and Carlisle have never even had human blood before. I drink from animals too, though I'm afraid I'm not very good at it."
"If you're trying to reassure me you're doing a terrible job," Louisa replied.
Jasper didn't seem to appreciate her comment. "It wasn't my intention to reassure you. I'm letting you know what you are getting into."
Louisa wanted to say that she still wasn't sure what she was getting into. Or running away from. "You make it sound like I'm about to make a deal with the devil."
"Perhaps you are," he responded after a long moment of silence. His voice was soft and sad and very, very tired. When he spoke, he didn't tell her what he wanted her to choose but it was very obvious which option he favoured. She knew that he would respect whichever decision that she made. He sounded downtrodden, lonely, tortured, and at times, filled to the brim with self-loathing.
Louisa wasn't sure if she wanted a life of watching her family and friends age and die, while she stayed young, frozen at the age Jasper had changed her at. She couldn't fathom letting her sister lose her older sibling when she had already lost her youngest. She couldn't imagine putting her father through the agony of losing one more member of his family. But she also knew that she couldn't let Jasper go through life thinking he was unworthy of love or anything good in his life, simply because he had been bitten by a vampire in 1863.
"Jasper, I've met monsters before," she said as the tiny Prius crossed over the Hoh River. "I've been inside of their heads and I know what they think. Trust me when I say that you're not one of them."
He scoffed at her words. "I've killed people before. Thousands of innocent people."
"Yes, you have," Louisa conceded. She tried to form her thoughts into a coherent sentence without her words sounding melodramatic, stupid, or like something someone might read out of a trashy paranormal romance novel. "I think the problems of our past can shape who we are, but they don't have to define us. What you did back then, who you were, maybe it wasn't right, Jasper. But that was then, and if you don't want to be that person, you don't have to be."
She probably was telling him something he already knew or had at the very least been told by someone who loved him. But she couldn't not tell him, because… because maybe she loved him too. In some bizarre, inexplicable twist of fate, Louisa realised that she cared for Jasper in a way that was too strong for a friend or a crush or a sort-of-kind-of boyfriend. Her feelings were way too strong for a girl who only met the guy in September. She couldn't definitively say that she was in love with Jasper because the word felt cheap somehow. Wrong. Empty even. It was something deep inside her, itching, irritating, and raw. She tried to imagine a life without Jasper and the idea made her blood burn and her chest to constrict. She wondered if Jasper could hear her heart pounding or feel her stomach churning.
She could feel his eyes on her and her skin prickled. She took a shuddering breath, knowing that her next words would change the course of her life. "And if you let me, I'd like to stick around for who you'll become."
The occupants of the car lapsed into silence once more, staring out into the night. Slowly, Jasper reached over and took her hand that had been resting in her lap, pressing a kiss to her wrist. Louisa thought that his skin was full of sadness, which sounded stupid but felt right.
When they passed the 'Welcome to Forks' sign, Jasper dramatically reduced the speed. Moments later, a cop car drove by. "I'd like for you to speak with Carlisle."
"Because you think I'm in shock?" Louisa asked. "Because I don't need your father to tell me that."
"Amusing, but no," he replied, still holding her hand hostage. "He thinks he knows why you are ill."
She wasn't sure if she was excited by the prospect of learning what was wrong with her or dreading the news. "And?"
"You're not truly ill," he replied, rubbing his incredibly cold nose against the inside of her wrist. "I would have done something about it." The tone of his voice left no doubt in her mind that him doing something about it meant she would already be a vampire. "You will have a doctor's appointment with Carlisle tomorrow, and he will be able to explain it then. You can tell your father that Carlisle will be assessing your PTSD."
"Will Dr Cullen even be able to see me so soon?"
"You take priority. Even so," he said. "Alice made an appointment for you last week." Sensing her confusion, he elaborated further. "She's psychic."
"Which is how she knew my dad would flip if I spent the night at your house," Louisa replied, suddenly understanding most of the weird quirks that Alice had. "And how she knew that we were going to hide today at lunch." Damn, was it only earlier today that that had happened? It felt like it occurred months ago.
"Precisely," Jasper said, pressing one last kiss to her wrist before pulling up to her house. The porch light was on and she was surprised her father hadn't already wrenched the door open and dragged her inside. In seconds, the Prius was turned off and he was standing by her car door before she even had the chance to unfasten her safety belt.
Louisa allowed Jasper to help her out of the car, her keys pressed gently into her palm as she stood. She looked up at the man in front of her. The clouds were gone and the moon was out, and his blond hair looked almost silver in the moonlight. She was acutely aware of how close they already were as he closed the car door behind her, but she stepped closer. His posture straightened but he didn't move away, his head tilting to the side as he watched her, waiting.
"You said if I wanted, I could run away and you wouldn't bother me," she said.
"Yes, ma'am," he replied, with a terse nod, his tone even, his face a smooth mask. A true Southern gentleman, if perhaps a touch expressionless.
She had told him that she wasn't running, and that was true. She had no plans to leave him anytime soon. She was still confused: she wasn't entirely sure what the hell being a mate meant, and she wasn't entirely sure what she was feeling. She didn't want to leave Dottie and her father, even if that meant that she could be with Jasper. But that was a later problem. The now problem was conveying that she, quite possibly, felt something for him too. Something much stronger than a crush. It scared the hell out of her in the same exhilarating way a rollercoaster did. "What if I told you that you could bother me all you like?"
Jasper's face was still blank of emotions, but she could feel them. Good lord, could she feel them. They flowed through her, soft and gentle; swirled around her, so violently that she was surprised that her hair wasn't moving; flitted across her skin like static electricity, the little hairs on her arms standing on end. She wasn't sure what emotion he was giving her, she had never experienced anything like it before. She just knew that it was Jasper and she enjoyed it quite a lot. "Then I'll see you tomorrow," he said finally. Then, so quickly that later she would wonder if she had merely imagined it, he stooped to press a kiss to her forehead. Before she had time to process completely what had happened, he was gone.
"What happened in the past that was painful has a great deal to do with what we are today, but revisiting this painful past can contribute little or nothing to what we need to do now."- William Glasser
A/N: what did y'all think? It took me a while to find the correct words for this chapter, and I really wanted to get it right. This is a pivotal moment in their relationship, so I didn't want to half-ass it. Also, it's finals week, and I needed something to distract me from my looming biochem exam. Anyway, drop me a comment down below and let me know what you though! -CheckAlexa