AN: Hi there! Thanks for clicking the link to this little story! I hope you guys enjoy the ride and stay around to the end. :)

A massive thank you to Spudzmom, who very kindly agreed to give my stuff a read before posting it on here and letting me know if its shit or not, lol. If you haven't already checked out her stuff. Please do! Her Jasper's are to die for!

Nottingham, England.

Present day.

Bella stared at the screen in front of her, willing the words to flow, willing the information, the knowledge to be there in her brain, though no amount of willing made it come. By now, she should've made a clear dent in this dissertation, yet all she had managed was a few paragraphs, and even those were a little stretchy. Sighing heavily, she picked up her textbook and stared at the recent page that was open.

Frowning, she fingered the corners of the book. It wasn't the page she had last been reading, and she knew she would have a hard time trying to find her page in a book that was over a thousand pages long.

" I should've picked a smaller book." She sighed. If only she had picked a smaller book, things would've been simpler. But no.

Bella had reasoned with herself that a small book would mean more books to lug around and keep track of. It was bad enough having that thing to carry with her. Though the thought of a smaller book right about now was appealing. She would be able to find her page with ease, be able to pick up where she had left off, instead of flicking for ages trying to locate her page.

"I should've bookmarked it." Hindsight was such a marvellous thing.

Then again, she did choose a degree in something she knew very little about and was taught very little at school about it. In fact, she was taught absolutely nothing about the American Civil war. She had only discovered her thirst for it at college.

Whatever silly notion that gave her the idea to study American history, and write her dissertation on the civil war was beyond her now. She didn't think she could do this, let alone get a degree in it. She should've just picked history and wrote about World War 2. She had at least spent 2 years in school learning that and at least she knew more about English history.

That thought saddened her and left a bitter taste in her mouth. Thanks to her senior history teacher, she had almost lost her love of history. Unbeknownst to her, she would be facing her last two years at senior school studying World War 2, and while she didn't have a problem with that part of history, she just found it…well, boring.

Alas, it was too late now. She had one last year and she would be free. Free to go on and spread her wings. Maybe even do a Masters degree, though she highly doubted it.

While she loved learning American history, she didn't love it that much.

Maybe she would go travelling. Hop on a plane and venture across the pond and actually see the states. She could travel to places and see where key points of the civil war happened. After all, she had spent so long writing and learning about it, that it only seemed right for her to actually see the place. Of course, she would head to Texas.

Even without the connection to the civil war, she had fallen in love with it long before she began her course of American history. All those hours of watching Dallas had an impact on her, she was sure of it. The whole idea of cowboys riding horses in the hot Texas sun, topless, with beads of sweat running down their chiselled chest and well-defined abs, made her weak at the knees. She wasn't about to have anyone burst her bubble on that, no matter how much she realised that the imagine of Texas she had, wasn't really a reality anymore. Plus, she could buy some new cowboy boots without having to pay the stupid import price.

Looking back at the book, she noticed it was full of names. Soldiers who had died or gone missing in action. Bella hadn't even begun to think about that, or even plan to write that part in her dissertation just yet. She would...of course, she would. But that was way off, way, way off.

One name caught her eye.

"Major Jasper Whitlock. Youngest major...blah blah blah, missing in action." Bella looked again at the page, really reading the inscription about him. "Hm, missing in action my arse. More like he bolted at the first chance he got. And who wouldn't? It's one thing to be a soldier at twenty, but another thing to be a major and in charge of soldiers," she mused out loud.

Bella looked at the old photo of the young major, and her heart fluttered. He was striking in that photo, in full confederate uniform, looking strong and proud. She couldn't quite believe that this gorgeous young man, in a photo from 1863 could make her heart flutter. Yet, it did. There was just something about him, something that stirred deep inside of her as she looked at him. His curly hair falling just short of his ears, looked surprisingly good on him, even in today's era, she imagined that he could pull it off if he was alive today. It was hard to tell just what colour his hair was, while the description had said it was blond, she wondered just what sort of shade it was.

'Wonder if he ever got in touch with his family?' The thought pondered around her mind as she looked at the old black and white photo of him. Of course, if you're pretending to be dead, then it's not something you're going to do. However, deserters happen in every war and they normally always showed up at some point. She just found it hard to believe that he had been killed and they couldn't find his body. Though he did look proud in that picture, so maybe he was killed, but she doubted it.

"Maybe he was embarrassed," she mused out loud.

"Who's embarrassed?" Emma said as she peeked into her room, making her jump.

With her heart in her throat and racing, she turned to face her roommate. "No one, just talking out loud." Bella shrugged her shoulders, trying to calm her racing pulse as she looked back at the screen that had very little writing on it. "I'm never gonna get this finished!"

"Relax, come for drinks. You've got eight months before you've got to hand in that bad boy. And I know you'll walk it. You did last time," Emma said, slumping down on Bella's bed.

She didn't exactly walk it. Second-year exams had been hard, harder than she had thought they would actually be. In a way, she had assumed that they would be easy like her first-year exams were, but they were anything but easy. She had only just managed to get past the seventy percent mark, and had a lot of work to do if she wanted top marks. If she wanted that 1st.

" I'll pass, thanks." Bella rubbed her forehead. Drinks did sound nice and maybe Craig would be there... No! She thought. Craig was a bad, very bad and very foolish idea.

She and Craig had spent the best part of last year locked together. They weren't ever really together, not in the normal boyfriend and girlfriend sense they weren't. They just tended to always end up in bed together, and always very drunk. Craig was a big reason for her hard second year exams. If she had spent more time working and less time fucking, she might not have found them so hard.

"If you're struggling so much, then here." Emma pushed in and pushed her fingers away from the keyboard.

She watched as Emma typed in something into the search engine and clicked a link. Bella's disbelief covered her as Emma smirked while typing. The smirk unnerved her, she had seen it many, many times over the last two and a bit years, and it was always bad news. It was an evil smirk, one that said Emma was playing mean.

"Sparkling Major?" Bella questioned as she looked at the profile Emma had created for her. "What site are you on? This better not be a dating site!" she demanded at her.

"Would I?" Emma smirked some more as she typed away. "This site is filled with people all over the world that have tonnes of info on all sorts. And by any chance, someone across the pond will know all about the civil war and can help you." She answered honestly, "Besides, if anything, you'll have lost nothing," she added as she finished typing. "How does this sound. 'Silly Brit girl in the final year of American history degree. Calling all yanks with a wonderful knowledge of their history, more so civil war to help this poor Brit gal out. I'll trade wonderful info on Robin Hood if it helps."

"You can't say yank, Emma."

"Why not?"

"Because it applies to the north." Emma blinked at her. "The civil war...North and south... I don't want to offend anyone and if someone from the south reads it..." Bella trailed off.

"But didn't the north win?"

"Yes."

"So the problem is..." It was times like this, that Bella wondered just how her friend got into uni.

Surely, she couldn't be that dumb that she didn't have any idea the offence she could cause with that term? Granted, Emma knew jack diddly shit about American history, but it wasn't that hard to figure out that maybe it would be offensive, even more, when it's pointed out to you. But as Bella looked at her friend, she realised that Emma still couldn't figure out just where the offence might be.

"Just change it, Emma," Bella huffed. "And why sparkling major."

"Why not? You were all sparkly last summer with all that glitter, running around saying "I wanna take a ride on your disco stick" Sparkles." Emma giggled out the silly nickname, bumping her shoulder.

Bella shuddered at the memory. She had been so very drunk, so very stupidly drunk and a few of her friends who were doing art had glitter tubes on them. So how she thought it would be a good idea to cover herself in glitter and run around singing stupid songs... She had claimed that she wanted to be a fairy, and was leaving a trail of fairy dust in her wake. Everyone thought she was bonkers that night. And she was. She had sat her last exam for the summer and was free, so she wanted to go out with a bang. It had taken an age to remove it all and she had found, thanks to running to Craig, that its like sand and gets everywhere. How it even got in some places she really didn't know, or even care to know.

"And as for the major bit? I saw the page you're reading, nicked it from there." Emma shrugged, hitting the upload button, and thus throwing Bella onto a site she knew very little about.

"Thanks, I think," Bella grumbled as Emma patted her back.

"Welcome, Sparkles." She grinned at Bella.

"Stop with that name. Ugh," she cried, "You know I hate it." Emma just shrugged in response. Rolling her eyes, Bella hoped that these people wouldn't be filling her inbox with crap. Maybe she should've created a whole new email account for this, at least that way her normal account wouldn't be subjected to mindless crap. "How do they get in contact?"

"They pm you," Emma explained, but carried on once she saw the look on Bella's face. "You'll get an email saying that someone has messaged you, and you'll have a link to take to the site. After that, it's up to you how you wanna get the info."

Bella watched as Emma edited her bio a little bit, and was thankful she wasn't making her sound either dumb or desperate. "There we are, all posted." Emma smiled at her handy work.

Xoxoxo

It had been two weeks since Emma had posted Bella's cry for civil war help, and in those two weeks, she had achieved not a great deal. All hope of finding out anything decent seemed to be losing ground and fast. The people that had messaged her so far had not been massively helpful.

One had asked her if she was insane for even taking the course, let alone wanting knowledge in civil war. Bella had wondered just why this person had even bothered to message her if they didn't like the history. The guy had actually gone out of his way, gone into the history section and messaged her. Bell knew that not everyone shared her love of history, and there had been times when she wasn't sure just why she was bothering to do this course in the first place, but to go out of your way, just seemed silly to her. Maybe he was bored, who knows.

Another one wanted to know if she would fly over there for his knowledge. He had gone into wonderful detail of just what he wanted her to do in exchange for it. It had creeped her out a little bit and she'd almost deleted the bio there and then, but somehow, someway, something told her to hold fire just a little longer.

Her fear of this being a dating website was coming true. Like everything on the internet now, everyone used everything as a way to date someone. Wasn't that what dating websites were for? Bella had never been on a dating website but had thought they were pretty self-explanatory. You know, dating website, a place for singles, the clue being in the name. Yet, here she was, finding this site, just turning out to be a free dating site. No wonder the tv was filling up with dating adverts, they were clearly struggling.

And another helped her understand as little more of it all.

Unfortunately, his information ended at school level and Bella needed a little more than that. What he had told her, was only what she found out herself, with maybe a little bit extra, but not massive and certainly not enough to write her dissertation on. While she could and would do this, she really wanted a mentor to help her give both sides a strong point in her dissertation. It would be massively helpful to speak with someone who was in the civil war, but considering it had happened way over hundred years ago, she was shit out of luck there. Her best hope was finding someone who was a civil war expert, but she doubted she would find one on this site.

Maybe she should go back to google again.

But that was where the trouble started. There was so much conflicting information that she really didn't know what was right from wrong. And the more she read, the more it confused her. She had gone to the library in hopes of finding something there, and while it held vast books of American history, nothing had what she was looking for. Bella needed it to be perfect, to hold all she needed to know, but she couldn't find it. When she inquired about more civil war books, she had been informed that the books they had last year, had not been returned. Thus leaving their civil war section a little bare. Everyone who was on her course was searching for the best ones, and no one was handing them back. Right now, Bella regretted the decision to do her dissertation on civil war. It was a minefield of conflictions.

Deciding that she was going to remove her plea for help, she powered up her laptop. She couldn't help but feel disappointed in the thought of removing it, but she couldn't stand to leave it there any longer. It was eating into her time, she checked daily, just to see if the site had missed sending her an email, and by some luck, her prayers would be answered, but that hadn't been the case. Bella resigned to the fact that she would just have to trail through her books and look up online. She had to hope and pray that she didn't end up with a confused paper to hand in, that would result in her failing her course.

Logging into the stupid site for the last time, she saw the little mark next to her messages. Seeing it caused a slight tremor of victory to run through her. She had been right, the site hadn't sent her an email notifying her of the message. Not that it mattered massively now anyway. Clicking on it, she decided that she may as well read it before she removed herself from the site.

From: Long Time dead.

Hi, what sort of help you looking for? Not a massive north fan, but I know my south stuff well. Lemme know if I can help this poor Brit gal out. :-)

A faint glimmer of hope took root in her as she stared at the little message. It had been sent during the night, so this person was clearly from states. Judging by the fact that they had said they weren't a north fan, meant they were from the south. Maybe they had a relative who was in the civil war? Bella thought to herself as hope began to grow at a rapid rate inside her. She knew she shouldn't feel this hope, should not let it take hold, after all, this person hadn't given her any information yet, and might not know anything. Though, they had certainly said, or in this case, written, all the right words to make her think that not all hope was lost.

She needed to slow down though and think. Did she really want to message this person back, only to be faced with disappointment? Then again, what if she didn't message them back and this person turned out to be a shit hot civil war buff, she would kick herself for not trying. Coming to the forth drawn conclusion, Bella smiled, maybe she wouldn't delete it just yet.

AN: So, that's chapter one. What you do guys think? I would love to hear your thoughts.