The Rise of Lydia Rowe ↠ Jasper Hale (ON HOLD)

[1.08] major jasper whitlock

LYDIA HUMMED ALONG to her music as she did her homework. She'd spent the better part of an hour googling photographs and descriptions of soldiers' uniforms from both sides of the Civil War, her eyes growing heavy as she continued bookmarking promising websites and saving good photographs to her flash drive. She took a sip from her water bottle, glancing at her alarm clock. 12:47. It was a good thing it was Friday—technically Saturday—so she didn't have to wake up for school in the morning.

She was scrolling through the images brought up by her latest search of Union major uniforms when she saw it. Honestly, she nearly missed it because she was just mindlessly scrolling at that point, but she'd stopped for a second to examine a hangnail on her thumb.

When she looked back up at her computer screen, her eyes landed on one of the many images. She furrowed her brow, recognizing the wavy hair of the man in the photo. She clicked on the photo, enlarging it so she could get a better look. Her eyes widened as she took in the soldier's features. The photo wasn't in color, of course, but the features themselves were identical.

"What the hell?" she asked herself quietly, wondering if her tired brain was making her hallucinate.

Either Lydia was seeing things, or the Union soldier in the picture was Jasper Hale.

She immediately doubled back, the logical part of her brain catching up to her wild imagination. It's probably a relative or something, she told herself, still staring at the picture. Though she knew that was the most logical explanation—and the only possible one, unless Jasper Hale was somehow over a hundred years old with the face of an eighteen-year-old—she couldn't help but be shocked at how similar they looked. Was it possible for a great-great-grandson to look so much like their great-great-grandfather?

Lydia clicked on the link the photo came from, finding herself on a website dedicated to the Union soldiers of the south. It was clearly a small website, and judging by some of the dates and fonts, it hadn't been updated in years. She scrolled down for a few seconds before spotting the photograph. Major Jasper Whitlock read the name underneath the picture. Born in Houston, Texas, in 1844, Major Whitlock was one of the few thousand Texan soldiers who fought for Union army during the American Civil War. He joined the army at a young age and quickly rose through the ranks, earning the title of Major only two years after enlisting. In 1863, Major Whitlock went missing while evacuating women and children near Galveston. He was presumed dead in 1864.

Lydia printed out the picture, folding it and putting it in her backpack. She bookmarked the source of the photograph and made sure everything on her laptop was saved before shutting it down, all with thoughts of Jasper Hale lurking in the back of her mind.

Laying down in bed, Lydia fell asleep to the image of her strange, beautiful classmate dressed as a Union soldier, a small part of her not entirely convinced it wasn't real.

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Lydia had known from the beginning just how strange the Cullens were. She had accepted it, even. But finding that picture of a Union soldier who looked insanely identical to Jasper Hale made her incredibly suspicious.

Every logical part of her kept saying that immortality wasn't real, that the only explanation was that Jasper's ancestor fought in the Civil War, and Jasper just happened to look almost identical to him—but there was still some part of her that couldn't accept that. Not completely.

She didn't tell anyone about her discovery, not even Gwen. She was afraid she was just making up the similarities, that anyone else wouldn't see the connection. She was afraid of looking like she was going crazy.