They had been driving in mostly silence for a few hours. Ayla had packed a small duffel bag of clothing and things to do while she was gone with the immortal vampires. She was unsure of just how long they would be away from Mystic Falls for and how long they would be trapped in the car. So she packed her phone, her iPod, a deck of cards, a few books and her sketch pad along with pencils. She had also managed to fit her mother's grimoire into the bag, knowing that she wanted to learn and understand magic on a greater scale than she currently had.

It was dark and she was trying to keep her eyes from glazing over as she listened to her playlist on her iPod. She would look up every once in a while to see Klaus gazing back at her through the rearview mirror, but she ignored it and the embarrassment when he caught her bobbing her head and lip-syncing. After a few hours of driving, Ayla pulled the headphones out of her ear and looked at the hybrid.

"So where exactly are we going?" She yawned slightly.

"Florida." He told her, keeping his eyes on the road this time.

"Wonderful." She muttered. "I hate Florida."

They had stopped several times on their road trip to Florida, either for gas or for Ayla, who Klaus now knew had a penchant for junk food. Every time he looked back at her, she was eating a bag of chips or popcorn or pretzels. The first time she was half asleep, yet still shoving Doritos into her mouth every few minutes, very obviously getting crumbs on his seat and floor.

"You're making a mess of the car, Ayla. You're getting your crumbs everywhere." He spoke up with an annoyed tone.

"Oh, like you're not some evil hybrid vampire that can just compel someone to clean it for you." She huffed sarcastically and rolled her eyes at him, as she looked straight at him from the rearview mirror and shoved another chip in her mouth with a small smirk. That had actually made him laugh, rather than feel annoyed, and Ayla blushed before looking away from him. But he could see the smile that she had attempted to hide from him.

When they had finally made it to Pensacola early the next morning, the early summer heat had her feeling sticky the second she stepped out of the vehicle. Even though she had changed into a tank top and shorts at a sleazy gas station, she still felt like she was overheating.

"You do know I'm a human and we need real human food more than once a day, right?" Ayla told him as he pulled into the parking lot of a diner. "I can't survive on gas station junk food and energy drinks."

"I don't think the car would survive you surviving on that either, love." He spoke with a smirk on his face.

"Shut up." She laughed back at him. Stefan just rolled his eyes at the two of them and mentioned that he was going to find something else to eat. But neither of them listened as Klaus opened the door to the restaurant for her and sat across from her in a booth. She had ordered a coffee and a big breakfast, nearly moaning at the first sip of coffee. Klaus had ordered the same, but was not nearly as dramatic as her when her had taken his first sip. They were quiet as Ayla closed her eyes tiredly, while waiting for their food.

"So, what's the plan?" She asked quietly, opening her eyes to see him looking back at her. "Why Florida? Why leave Mystic Falls?"

"Are you sure you want to know about my evil plans?"

"I want to know what I'm getting myself into."

"All you need to know right now is that I will help you learn control. And my plans will be divulged when I'm ready."

They had been traveling throughout Florida for a week and they were all a little restless. All Ayla knew at this point was that Klaus was looking for werewolves, and they were harder to find than he originally thought. Even the wolves that she and Mason had once ran with had cleared out.

She had learned a few things about Klaus. One being that he was an impatient man. For someone who was a thousand years old, she thought that he would have learned patience, especially considering he had quite literally all the time in the world. But he hadn't. Every dead end led to him being aggravated and exasperated. It made her nervous to ask about how or when he was going to teach her, like promised.

But tonight was different. The three of them sat at their own table, in the corner of the very crowded bar. Ayla just looked around as her head had begun to hurt. She felt so many emotions from so many different people tonight and Klaus could tell she wasn't her usual sarcastic, yet talkative self. She had just kept quiet trying to push away all of the emotions so she could focus on herself.

"Do you feel all of their emotions right now?" Klaus asked her, Stefan looked over to them as he took another sip of his drink. Ayla just bit her lip nervously and nodded before explaining.

"Remnants of them. It's like… when I touch someone it's a downpour of everything they're feeling. But when I'm around big groups like this, it's like a drizzle. I feel some droplets, but sometimes it's so much at once that it can cause me physical pain. Sometimes it just overpowers me."

"Nothing can overpower you, Ayla." He promised her. "What emotions are you feeling in the bar right now?"

"Overall, it's contentment, happy. People are enjoying their time here. But there are other feelings here too… Devastation, stress. Uh, someone else is mourning a loss."

"And what is it that you are feeling?"

"I-I don't know." She told him, shaking her head. Very few people ever really cared to ask her how she truly was or what she felt at any given moment. "I can't really focus on my emotions when I'm surrounded by so many people."

"Ayla, stop putting everyone else in front of you." She looked at him with solemn eyes, knowing that he was right. Whether it was their feelings or their needs, she was always putting everyone else in front of her. "Right now, push your emotions to the front. What do you feel?"

"Worried."

"Why?"

"I'm worried that my powers will always control me. That the full moon will always control me. And that the emotions of everyone else will always overpower my own even when I don't want them too."

"They won't." He spoke with confidence. "Now, focus on one person. Just one person in this entire bar. The man over there playing billiards, red shirt. Can you feel what he's feeling?"

"I'm too far away and there's too many people here. I need to touch him."

"No, you don't. Focus on your powers, love." He watched her eyes narrow at the man, she stared at him, examined him. "Now, what do you feel from him?" She watched as the man laughed in the face of another man before he checked out a few different women and cat called them. Her head was throbbing as she focused on this one man.

"He's arrogant. Cocky."

"We all can see that, love. Dig deeper." She bit the inside of her lip and focused harder, feeling the waves of emotion in the bar slowly ebb and fade away until she felt only what the man in the red shirt felt.

"He's insecure and unhappy. He's worried that no one around him truly likes him." She started, getting a sense of what the man was truly feeling. Her ears rang as she drowned out all other emotion in the bar. "But he's so desperate for approval that he continues to try too hard. The men around him, they care about him but they loathe him and he knows it. He knows that he embarrasses them, but he needs to be the sole center of attention. He would rather be hated and noticed than liked and pushed to the side."

"You're getting better." He smiled at her as he looked to her with a reverent gaze. Ayla smiled as a drop of blood dripped from her nose slightly, indicating that she pushed herself a little too hard. Klaus immediately took the napkin and held her face gently with one hand while wiping the blood away with the other. She gazed into his eyes as his one hand caressed her face, her heartbeat speeding up at the intimately soft touch. "Fancy a drink?"

Stefan stared at the two of them for a moment before announcing his departure. She realized that more often than not, when Klaus didn't need him, Stefan would choose to spend time alone. She had wondered what he did in his time alone, but each time he came back reeking of alcohol, regret, and a tinge of blood. So she never questioned him.

And she was grateful that he never questioned her about the subtle touches or intimate looks that the two hybrids shared.

The next few weeks were similar, Klaus looking for werewolves while helping Ayla control the emotions she felt when surrounded by crowds. The ability to feel others emotions had been relatively new to Ayla. She had only realized that she had it after the first full moon after the accident, along with her dreams and visions. So, Ayla had never been able to differentiate the emotions of each person in a large group of people. But with Klaus pushing her and coaxing her, she was getting better.

And more importantly, she was getting better at understanding her own emotions. She was no longer allowing others emotions to build up and overflow into hers. She had been in the process of learning to compartmentalize the feelings of others, while still feeling her own and it had made her feel more comfortable in her own brain. And in her own skin.

She was learning how to control her abilities instead of letting her fear and her abilities control her.

But when the first full moon arrived, Ayla's progress had diminished substantially. They were in the middle of the woods in some random backwater town in Florida. She had begged Klaus to take her somewhere far away from other people, so she wouldn't be able to hurt them and surprisingly enough, he agreed.

He had tried to prepare her to learn to control her transformation. He explained that she would have to fight her body's natural reaction to transition. He explained that it would hurt even worse to fight it the first time, but the pain would gradually ease each full moon afterwards. He explained that since she was a hybrid, if she chose to fight the transition, she would never have to change again.

So as she stood under the light of the full moon, she shook in pain. But mostly she shook in fear. She feared he was wrong. That she would be cursed to change on every full moon for the rest of her life. That she would be cursed to hurt innocent people whenever they got too close.

"You're a hybrid, Ayla." He told her as she felt her bones start to rattle. Her jaw clenched as she tried to focus on fighting the pain and the transition. "You're one of the most powerful hybrids there is."

"How do you know all of this, Klaus? How do you know if I fight it I won't change? And that I won't have to change? W-what if you're wrong?"

"I knew of only one other werewolf-warlock hybrid. But he was around for a very long time. He had gone through the same thing you are right now."

"Can't you just change me?" She cried, tears lingering in her eyes. "That's your plan right? To sire a line of vampire-werewolf hybrids? Please, just change me, Klaus. Please just... help me!"

"I can't, Ayla." He pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, trying to comfort him. He remembered the first time he transitioned. He remembered screaming the same words 'help me' several times. But mostly he remembered how he just wanted someone to understand what he was going through, to comfort him. But he never had that. Instead, he had been treated like a beast. An abomination.

"I didn't ask for this! Please just change me." She begged him. "I don't want this, Klaus!"

"Witches are servants of nature. If I turn you, you'll lose your powers."

"You don't know what it's like." She sobbed, looking up at the moon to see it moving slowly towards its apex. "You don't know!"

"I do, Ayla. I do know what it's like." He told her. "Though my werewolf nature was suppressed, I still lived through the pain of every single full moon. I couldn't physically change, but I felt the pain. I felt everything."

"For a thousand years?" She looked at him with tearful eyes.

"I've grown quite accustom to pain, love." He told her, blinking away his own tears. She wanted to respond but she couldn't all she could do was just scream out in pain. "Fight it, Ayla! Think about the future. A future where you won't ever have to change again. This one moment of pain will keep you from a lifetime of pain."

"I can't!" She shouted to him, holding his hand so tightly that she was glad he was virtually indestructible, otherwise she knew she would have broken it.

"Control." He spoke to her softly, gently holding her chin and tilting her head up so she was looking in his eyes, but still not letting go of her hand. "You can fight it."

She screamed out as she fought her body. As the full moon moved further into its apex her pain only grew stronger. She wept and cried, feeling her bones shivering and cracking and quaking, but she never relented. Until finally, she was on the ground gasping out small breaths of relief. Klaus picked her up in his arms, seeing how absolutely exhausted she was.

"You did it, little wolf."

"I did it? I-I don't have to change anymore?" She stuttered, looking up at him.

"Your body will feel like it wants to every full moon. But you will continue to fight it. This time will be the worst and soon, you won't feel any at all. Then you'll be able to control if and when you want to change."

"Like you?"

"Like me." He nodded in confirmation.

"T-thank you." She smiled and Klaus saw the light return to her eyes. He swore that it was a light so powerful it could guide through the darkest of hearts.

AN: Thank you to everyone who read, favorited, and followed my story. A few notes: 1) I've realized some people have commented about Klaus' odd relationship with Ayla, that will be explained as the story unfolds. 2) I see some of you are concerned that Ayla is weak, easily manipulated, and/or naive. I do understand your concern, but she does change as the story goes on. Some things you need to remember about Ayla is that she is a vulnerable and lonely person. She has also made it pretty clear that she doesn't like to be a werewolf. She represses that side of her so refrains from being super aggressive and firey, but she does and will have her moments. Plus she is just a genuinely kind-hearted person. So maybe that makes her seem meek, but she does get stronger in her abilities and in her personality as she grows and learns. 3) If you don't like her, that's fine. Everyone has their personal opinions. So maybe this story is not for you, and that's perfectly okay! There are a ton of great fics out there!

Anyway, thank you to all of the guests who have reviewed, as well as vancabreuniter, NegansGirl2020, BlueBloodsSVUOrder, and Blu3b3rryT3a. Also, DaphneSlytherinWinchester, I really appreciate your constructive criticism. There are a few points that I totally agree with, and others that I don't, which is fine. I hope you will continue reading, but if you don't I totally understand. Thank you for taking the time out to give me honest feedback.