I second that EMOTION

SUMMARY:Jasper was turned into a vampire during the civil war. He developed in a bloody world of consumption, power, rage, and thirst. In this new life he brought his own power to read and manipulate those around him. His creator used him for his abilities and his skills for her own purposes but after over a century of feeling all that he did it was time to leave and so he did...

AUTHOR NOTES:

My first fanfiction. :-) So excited. I've had so many ideas that have crossed my mind but this idea came to me a few days ago and I couldn't shake it. There's so many stories about the main triad of Bella, Edward and Jacob but I wanted something different. My first thought was Jasper. He's such an enigmatic character with a juxtaposition of power versus his past. This idea bounced in my head and I hope you enjoy it. :-) So far I'm only anticipating doing this story from Jaspers POV but I'll play it by ear.

DISCLAIMER: Stephanie Meyer owns Twilight not me. I'm just playing around with the characters we all love. :-)

THINGS THAT DIFFER IN MY STORY from Twilight-

**Story takes place in 2017 instead of original time frame so all vampires ages will be slightly different. (I may make some younger and some older)

**JASPER- His gift will obviously be front and center in this story so it will be more powerful than perceived in original story.

**TIMELINE- Jasper is 156 years old. He was born in 1844 and joined the civil war in 1861 (At the age of 17). He was turned at the age of 20 (1864) and was with Maria for 116years. He has been away from the southern armies for about two decades.

ALICE-

**I love Alice to death but I hate how overpowered her gift is so it will be significantly weaker in my story. FYI.

**Alice is already a Cullen in my story. Her story will be a bit different as a result.

**Don't worry about Alice. She will still be bubbly, sweet, kind, and AWESOME. ;-)

VAMPIRES- They will be a bit different from base story. (Weaker in some ways since they are a bit overpowered in original).

**They will need to sleep on occasion.

**The amount they need to feed will be based on how much they exert themselves.

**Sunlight doesn't hurt them but they do get a little weaker in the sun if they are in it to long.

**Vampires can get stronger with age, though nowhere near as strong as the newborn stage.

**Vampires tend to get overly confident with age which can be their downfall.

MATES-

**Vampires have one true mate like in the original story but the bond can take awhile to be recognized by one or both of the pair.

**Vampires are possessive of their mates and protective even without recognizing them as their mate consciously.

BELLA-

**This is Jasper's story not Edward's so most likely she will not come into play. We'll see...

Words expressed like this- This represents a power reading. This will mean the emotions Jasper is reading.

Chapter#1: One is the LONELIEST number

JPOV

Nothing The only good thing about feeding was the end of it. I could no longer feel my victims fear, pain, and panic. I just felt nothing. Truthfully it made me smile every-time. I'm sure to an onlooker I looked sadistic, smiling over the human I'd just killed. Nothing could be further from the truth. I was smiling because their pain was over and they were at peace. I took a piece of my prey with me that no other of my kind did. Not the blood of course, we all took that. It was their feelings that I kept with me. Each one holding on to me in the form of a red memory. Each time I fed I had to virtually attack myself since I could feel what each of my victims did as I took their life. I suppose that made me the most masochistic creature on the planet. Repeatedly killing myself over and over again.

*Shrug*

I was alone now and had been for a decade after Peter, his mate Charlotte, and I parted ways. I missed them both. They were good friends but I couldn't be around the blood lust anymore. Ironic given that I still feed from humans myself, but for me it's different. I felt every emotion around me and I couldn't turn that off, I never could. As a result when we fed together, I could feel three needs at once instead of just my own. Add in the fear of my victim and it was just too much. I dealt with it for over a decade given how much better it was with just the three of us over the army I'd had to feel for well over a century. Peter being as close to a brother as I had, picked up on my pain and offered to part with me for a brief time so I could get things 'under control', his words. Vampires don't have control, that's an illusion. We are beasts, some would say monsters. Our newborn stage shows that basic truth, the RESTRAINT, not control, we show after that is just the beast on a chain, but those links can break. I've seen it a hundred times before, and I am no exception to that rule.

After I left... Maria... It's still hard to think of her now, twenty years later, but I digress. After I left... HER, I tried to fight what I am. It was foolish. I was over a century in age yet I didn't want to be what I was anymore. I felt like I was suffocating under the countless horrors I'd committed in the name of 'love'. Love... that's what I'd thought it was at the time, I don't even have a word for it now, and I'm an empath for Christs sake. There is no word for it, no single explanation for a century of whatever we had.

When I'd awoken from my change and Maria had explained what I was I went along with it, easier than I should have. I should have been angry, scared, or at the very least thoughtful. I was none of those things. She explained everything to me, and truthfully she didn't really lie, yet I went with it. I went with her. I took so many lives, and not just humans. My job was to not only train the newborns to fight in her war but to eliminate them when they were no longer useful.

Many of them I couldn't really have cared less for. Nightmares as humans and monstrosities as immortals. I was doing the planet a favor dispatching those ones, some of which I'd turned myself, under Maria's orders. Then there were some that were kinder souls, just trying to survive in this ravaged world they woke up in. I could feel which didn't deserve to die but Maria asked it of me and I obeyed. Honestly sometimes I wondered if, given what I could feel, was I the biggest monster of all? Doing what I did, despite feeling how wrong it was. I was young, foolish, manipulated, and used. That was no longer the case. I was alone now and I wouldn't be used again.

(I almost ended it here for the chapter but I decided to be nice) :-)

I had just finished up a long stretch of time in Russia, enjoying the cold, as it were. It may seem strange for a frozen, stone like creature to enjoy more cold but I did. I despised the heat. It reminded me of my victims, and I didn't want reminders of what their flesh felt like as I sunk my teeth in their necks. I had passed through Alaska and most of Canada, when I decided to head back to the states. I haven't been back since I left Maria and I missed my homeland. I desperately wanted to return to Texas, but that was far to close to Maria and whatever coven she currently possessed. I couldn't say 'was with' because possession was closer to the truth. Maria's only loyalty was to herself and her quest for power. Why she didn't join the Volturi, I'll never fully understood. It would be a match made in a very dark place, and the world would be that much darker as a result.

I decided to take a scenic route through Washington State. I'd never been here before and it was quite beautiful. The amount of rain was something to behold. It put my senses on overload. Everything smelled stronger, my eyes had to work harder, and the sounds were muffled yet more beautiful with the slight echo behind the sound of the drops. I'd been running for about 12 hours straight from Canada through Washington and was feeling the drain. I slowed down as the need to hunt became forefront in my mind. I hadn't fed in almost 4 weeks now and there would be no putting it off further. Unlike others of my kind, I took no thrill in the hunt. It was a case of 1 + 1 equals 2 for me. I needed to feed and humans were what I ate. I took no joy in hurting them, and even less in making them suffer. My hunting technique was simple. Find the closest human possible, drain them fast and never look back. Charlotte once told me that I was terrifying to watch hunt because I was so fast and cold about it. She had described it as 'You see them, then they're gone'. I didn't understand what she meant but if it was terrifying to an onlooker and more, dare I say humane, to my victim then it was win win. Vampires made a habit of following others that they picked up the scent of and if I was terrifying to watch maybe they would think twice before crossing me.

I was over one-hundred and fifty years old and quite strong as well as skilled. I'd never lost a single fight, even when I was human. It was a title many would be proud of, given the century long war I'd been in, staving off ravenously crazed newborns day and night, but it came with a price. My entire body was riddled with bite marks. Vampire bites, as the only thing that can mark the impregnable skin of my kind were bites from one of our own kind. Any who saw me were instantly on edge and scared of me as a result. No part of my body was spared, though no spots were as bad as my neck and arms. Even with my vision and memory I couldn't count out the individual bites on any part of me. Maybe 100 total? Maybe more? It didn't really matter. Vampires were considered quite beautiful by human standards and many relied on that as it was one of our many weapons to lure in our human prey. Looks weren't something I needed to depend on, given my 'kill them fast' hunting technique however, so my lack of beauty from the scars didn't upset me. Besides to a human I would still look beautiful, as the vampire bites would not look as pronounced to their far weaker eyesight, but to a vampire I imagine I was quite unsightly.

Joy Without having to try, I absorbed the emotion I could sense on the other side of the forest. Positive emotions were more than a drug to me, they were a lifeline. Human or vampire, it didn't matter. I used those feelings as a small battery to charge up the smallest bit of a soul I had left. I had slowed to a walk as my hunger became apparent and now I stopped entirely to absorb what I felt. It was potent, meaning more than one. I could always sense emotions from farther away than I could my basic 5 senses. This gave me an edge in defending myself from a foe or finding my prey, such as now. Judging by the level of intensity I would definitely say human, as vampires feel things stronger than humans. But it was louder, meaning multiple humans. I would guess 7... no 10. A party perhaps. Given the location in the middle of the woods, and the time of night, after midnight, I didn't need to be psychic to anticipate inebriated teenagers. I started walking towards the emotions, absorbing everything they were giving. I would need this in order to do what was necessary. Eventually I heard music at the same time I could smell them. I was correct, 10 human heart beats pumping loudly almost in rhythm to the music they were listening to. I took in a big whiff of their scent and felt the venom pool in my mouth. The blissfulness they were giving off tied in with the sweet, tangy, robust scent of their blood had my whole body tense. I generally did anything in my power to find a human traveling alone but I could sense no one else and since I caught these humans scent I knew if I left them to keep searching for different prey, my blood lust would just lead me back to them. By then my restraint could be nonexistent, forcing me to kill them all.

I was left with the only option being to lure one away. Risky, as the others would be able to describe me to the police and it could put any of my kind at risk that are hunting within the humans area of investigation. It was unfortunate but since I refused to kill them all, I had little choice. The best I could do was wait for them to be drunk enough that they would not be able to recognize me later, even if I was in front of them. Luckily it had been long enough since I fed that my black eyes wouldn't stand out to them, whereas my freshly fed red, would. I stopped outside of some trees and watched the teens talking and laughing around a campfire, drinking beer and having a good time. I closed my eyes and felt the pulse of everything they felt and allowed myself to feed from it.

Joy, lust, trust, hunger, exhaustion

My eyes snapped open at the last one. A couple of them were tired. I smiled to myself as I focused on that. After I wrapped my mind around it, I projected it forward. I aimed it at all of them at once. Almost instantly I noticed all of their eyes begin to droop. I smiled at how easy this would be. I intensified the feeling. I noticed two had already fallen asleep but unfortunately the rest were hanging in there. I closed my eyes and focused on what I was doing. After a few more moments I opened my eyes and noticed only two humans were left awake.

Lust

I rolled my eyes at the one emotion that could stave off exhaustion in a teenager. I unfortunately would have to take away the emotion from them, absorbing it into myself. I hated having that emotion at all, let alone taking it on purpose. It made my life complicated and had ruined my life more than I cared to think about. Nevertheless, desperate times. I focused on it and pulled it from the young couple. As soon as I did I was hit with a wave of ecstasy for what they had felt towards each-others embrace. SHIT, it wasn't lust, it was love. I ignored it for now and pushed forth the exhaustion until they were all asleep. I sighed and shook my head as I climbed out of the trees and into the clearing.

END NOTES:

First chapter is done. *whew* Please REVIEW and let me know what you think.

Story (SONG) Title: "I second that EMOTION" by The miracles- I actually don't care for this song but I love the title and it fit perfectly for this story since its all about Jasper (an empath) learning how to process feelings again after closing himself off decades ago. He does this by truly feeling others around him and finding those emotions in himself. :-)

Chapter (SONG) Title: "One is the LONELIEST number" by Three Dog Night- Fitting chapter name as it's the first chapter and its all about Jasper being alone.