Eleven hours.
That's how long Ayla has been trapped in the old, worn down truck. Her head pounding from the bumpiness of the ride and her heart racing from the anxious thoughts that her brain has been torturing her with amidst her return.
Eleven long, monotonous hours of the same twenty-five shitty pop songs playing over and over again.
"You know, for someone with a Lockwood trust fund, you would think you would be able to get your stereo fixed so we didn't have to listen to one channel that plays the same songs over and over again the whole way here." Ayla spoke up in annoyance, shoving a Dorito into her mouth.
"We both know I blew through that trust fund years ago." Her Uncle Mason said with a smirk.
"Well, you have no idea how much I hate being in this truck." She frowned, absentmindedly playing with the hem of her dress as she looked out the window at the passing mile markers, seeing that they were inching closer and closer to their dreaded location. "Do we really have to go back to Mystic Falls? We can always turn back around. I liked it in Florida."
"You hated it in Florida."
"Okay, true." She leaned her head back with a sigh. "But it's still better than coming back to Mystic Falls."
"Your dad died, Ayla." He spoke up softly. "It's okay to not feel okay about it."
"I do feel okay, though."
"You can't keep running from your emotions."
"You of all people should know that it's quite literally impossible for me to run from my emotions."
"Right." He nodded, his eyes flitting to her to see her knee bouncing as she bit her fingernail. "Still, you don't feel anything about your dad dying? About your big return to Mystic Falls?"
"I feel like something bad is bound to happen and that we should just turn around and go back to Jacksonville."
"Well, we can't."
"What aren't you telling me, Mason?" She looked at him suspiciously. "Why are we really going back?"
"To grieve my dead brother and your dead father. And to make sure that our family is okay." He spoke sternly. "Now stop getting crumbs all over my truck and your dress, you know how Carol is."
Ah, yes. The evil stepmother.
Ayla stayed silent for the remaining thirty or so minutes of the ride to Mystic Falls. When they finally passed the welcome sign, her heart thudded quickly in her chest. It had only been less than ten months since she moved away, but it felt like it had been years.
Everything looked the same on the outside. But everything seemed so different now. She felt like an outsider looking in and she suddenly remembered a very similar car ride more than five years earlier when she had first moved to Mystic Falls.
Her whole life had been uprooted and taken for a whirlwind. In a matter of days she lost her mother, left the only home she had ever known, and had been forced to move to a new town with a distant father and a step mother who never failed to make her feel like an interloper.
She could see an uncanny resemblance to her entrance back to Mystic Falls again.
Dead parent. Check. Leaving home. Check. Forced back to a town where I am not wanted nor do I belong. Check.
The Lockwood Estate hadn't changed in the slightest. It was still extravagant, showy, and completely pretentious. It was nothing like the home she grew up in for the first twelve years of her life. And God, how she missed that home.
Thinking back to her old life, Ayla felt guilty at the lack of sorrow she felt. There was an abundance of townsfolk at the home grieving their mayor and she didn't even want to come back to Mystic Falls to say goodbye to her own father, and that made her feel ashamed.
When her mother died she had felt pure, unadulterated heartache. She had lost her confidant, her best friend, her protector. But her father, he had felt like a stranger to her most of her life. Someone who never cared to connect with his children in ways other than with words of disappointment or anger. And how do you grieve a stranger?
"Home sweet home." Ayla muttered to herself, getting out of her thoughts. She heard Mason scoff out a light laugh as they got out of the truck to see her older brother greeting people near the door.
"So the black sheep return." Tyler crossed his arms over his chest, a disappointing look on his face as he looked at his younger sister and Uncle.
"Tyler?" Mason smiled, not having seen his nephew in years.
"Yeah." He nodded with a slight smile before looking to his sister."
"What happened to you?" He smiled. "In my mind, you're twelve years old."
"Well, that's two years older than the last time you saw me, Uncle Mason. Could have been a few months ago but you didn't even wait to see me before bolting with this one." He pointed to Ayla.
"Get over here." Mason hugged him tightly. "Good to see you again."
"It's good to see you, too." He looked back at Ayla. "You too, A. Come on inside." Tyler pointed to the house. Ayla nodded and grabbed her duffel bag from the back of Mason's truck and started walking over to them. "You remember where your room is?"
"I don't know, might get lost in this mansion." She looked around the house, realizing how big it was again. She went back to the small twelve year old who got lost trying to find her way around for a good month when she first moved in.
"Couldn't be that much different from the two bedroom shack you were staying with Mason in."
"Oh, yeah. Not at all." She said sarcastically, with a small smile on her lips as Tyler escorted her to her room. "I surprisingly missed you, Tyler."
"You just missed fighting with me everyday."
"The highlight of my days." She sat on her bed and looked around her room that hasn't changed one bit. "Sorry about dad."
"Let's not..." He started, causing her to get up and walk out of the room with him. They walked over to Carol who was in the middle of speaking with Mason.
"Ayla." Carol looked her up and down. Ayla could immediately sense the disapproval rolling off her step-mother.
"Carol. It's nice to see you again." She gave a small smile, not wanting there to be any tension, especially not during her father's wake and in front of practically the entire town. She could physically feel the uneasiness between the family, causing her to clear her throat. "I'm gonna go get a drink."
Ayla stood in the corner by herself, looking around the room to see a ton of people that she knew and a few that she didn't. But most paid her no mind. A moment later she watched an attractive raven haired man walk over to Sheriff Forbes, who was standing just a few feet away from her.
"Who's the guy with Carol?" The man spoke as Ayla inched closer, listening into their conversation nosily. She wanted to know why this man was asking questions about her uncle.
"That's the Mayor's younger brother, Mason Lockwood."
"Is he on the council? Like John Gilbert was when he rolled in?"
"He's nothing like John." Sheriff shook her head. "For one, he's not an ass. He's not a believer, either. He wants nothing to do with the council. He's too preoccupied finding the perfect wave and taking care of Ayla."
"Ayla?" The man asked, questioningly.
"Richard's daughter from another... relationship." Sheriff Forbes tried to soften the blow. Really, she was the product of a drunken one night stand by a man who had a pregnant wife at home and a woman who was trying to quell her loneliness after being excluded from her family. She felt her own loneliness creeping up on her as she walked past them, continuing to listen to the tail-end of their now whispered conversation. "That's her right there. She's a sweet girl. She moved down to Florida with him last May after the Gilbert accident."
"Hmm. Thanks." The man looked at Mason before looking at Ayla. They made eye contact with each other before Ayla walked outside of the house. Without paying attention, she immediately bumped into Jeremy Gilbert.
"Jeremy." She accidentally touched his arm, feeling the shock and then a sudden rush of sadness radiating off of him as she pulled her hand away from him, as if she was burned at the feeling of him.
"Ayla. What are you doing here?"
"I-uh... my dad died." She muttered, looking around at the guests. "I came back for the wake."
"And then you're probably gonna leave again, right?"
"Jeremy, about the accident... about leaving..."
"Look, I'm sorry about your dad. But, uh, I have to go find Tyler. See ya."
"Yeah. Thanks, I guess." She muttered sadly, watching him walk off past Elena and Jenna, who had yet to see her.
Ayla blinked back the tears that wanted to fall from her eyes and took a deep breath before moving towards the stairs, climbing up them quickly. Even with all of these people here, all grieving her father and showing their respect, she still felt all alone.
She walked past her bedroom and stared out over the gardens, seeing Elena speaking with an unfamiliar man. Her eyebrows furrowed as she wondered how it was possible that Elena moved to the gardens so quickly, but Ayla didn't have a chance to question it further as she heard glass shattering from her father's office.
"Tyler! What are you doing?" Carol spoke loudly, just as Mason ran towards the office, Ayla following behind him quickly.
"I hate him." Tyler spat through breathy gasps.
"Oh, don't say that!"
"Let go of me!" Tyler pushed his mother off of him. Carol fell back onto the couch and Mason tackled him away from the older woman, causing him to fall onto the ground. Ayla covered her mouth, at the sight of her brother breaking down. "Get off me!"
"Hey, Tyler! Hey, hey!" Mason yelled, trying to calm him down.
"Carol..." Ayla tried to help the woman up off the couch.
"Don't touch me." She pointed at the younger woman who stood there with a sad look on her face.
"I said get off me!" Tyler yelled.
"Tyler!" Mason pinned him down more roughly. "Look at me. Look at me. Calm down. Settle down."
"Oh, God." Carol gasped, looking at her son. Ayla just looked at them sadly, feeling like she was intruding on a family moment. She looked at them with tears in her eyes as she walked away and into her bedroom. She closed her bedroom door quietly and looked up at the ceiling, wiping the tears from her eyes. All she could do was hope that her brother wouldn't trigger the same curse that she was afflicted to every full moon.
AN: So, this is the first chapter of my Klaus x OFC fan fiction. The first few chapters are setting the stage for Ayla's character, but Klaus will arrive in chapter nine. So expect a slow burn!