the empath;

“As a man of peace, Jasper struggled. But as a man of war, he was more that I'd ever imagined.”

[Midnight Sun]

Any sort of safety I’d felt with these strangers vanished as soon as I saw him.

"In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse." The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S Eliot

"Bella got to school quite early and, seeming intent on enjoying the sun while it lasted, sat at one of the seldom-used picnic benches while she waited for the first bell to ring. Her hair caught the sun in unexpected ways, giving off a reddish shine that I had not anticipated."

First there were the furious passages in his journal from when he tucked tail and fled to Alaska. As his mind levels out, they re-orient from self-deprecation to curiosity about her. He comes back but keeps his distance after the accident— he makes up for it by writing letters he’ll never send her. When he realized he was falling for her (and in denial about it), the ensuing drafts sound an awful lot like Mr. Darcy’s first proposal. When he’s accepted he’s in love, he goes into all the great gory details that he’s sure would scare her away in their intensity.

The (still unsent) letters and journal entries from his time away in New Moon show his rapid descent into desolation. They’re barely coherent, by the end, except for the very last letter he wrote on the plane to Italy— his final goodbyes.

Bella doesn’t know about any of these letters until the end of New Moon, when Edward’s trying to convince her that he’s really back, this isn’t a dream, and he never stopped loving her. When they go to his house, it’s not for the vote: he wants to show her the proof. She gets halfway through one letter before she can’t read through her tears.

“As a man of peace, Jasper struggled. But as a man of war, he was more that I'd ever imagined.”

[Midnight Sun]