2 years ago- England
It had been a couple of days since Kai and Dorothy headed off to America to find Kol in an attempt to keep Annabelle even more happy than usual by updating her about what was going on with Kol and his wife, Davina.
While Annabelle was bidding them goodbye, Joseph was kind of glad that they were leaving.
He had no problems with Dorothy.
It was Kai that he had a problem with.
A year after their visit to Copenhagen, Kai saw Joseph looking at engagement rings to see which would be a perfect fit for her, only for his attention to be brought over to Kai when Kai threatened to disembowel him and set him on fire, if he hurt Annabelle.
And since Kai had no problem with killing his entire family and both the Phoenix and Gemini Covens at least nine years prior at that point, Joseph had no reason not to believe that Kai would follow through on his threat if he found out that Annabelle got hurt.
And as soon as Kai had left England with Dorothy, Joseph immediately went back to work, while Annabelle spoke with them over the phone.
He wanted to make sure everything was perfect, while also making sure Annabelle didn't revert back to the person she was when they had first met twelve years ago.
It was this reason alone that he kept a close eye on Annabelle, while she wandered around the streets of England and took in the sights of how different things seemed to be for her after not being in England for five-hundred and thirty years.
It wasn't until she stopped outside of a burnt down and broken home that Joseph asked her, "Annabelle, what's wrong?"
She told him, "This, Joseph, is exactly where I had met William Kelly over five-hundred years ago. He was only human then, and I had been a vampire for nearly five-hundred years at the time. I, um, I saw how his parents had treated him. I remember how angry I got with them. I suppose seeing how they treated him reminded me of how Mikael and Esther had treated me before I left my home and moved in with Atticus." After sighing to herself, she said, "So in order to give him the chance to have revenge against those that had wronged him, I chose to be kind and offer him the chance to become like me. To become a vampire. At first, he was terribly confused. He didn't understand what I had meant until I compelled his parents to stay still and not make a single sound, whilst I explained to him everything he could have going for him, if he let me turn him. After what felt like hours of answering all of his questions, he agreed. I fed him my blood, snapped his neck and waited until he woke up."
As she took a couple steps towards the damaged home, she said, "As soon as he woke up, I bit into his mother's wrist and offered it to him. I didn't even have to say anything. He immediately started to drink her blood the moment he got to her. And once he was fully turned into a vampire, he tore into the throats of his parents and didn't stop until they were dead. He consumed every single ounce of their blood before he went through the rest of his village and started to kill every single person that had treated him rather horribly his whole life. He had twenty-five years of people that he hated, and he killed them all."
After he stopped just beside her, he asked her, "How did you convince Klaus to let you take William with you guys?"
She replied, "Well, it did take a while for him to accept it. At first, he was going on saying how love was a vampire's greatest weakness and that I was a fool to become so weak. After I reassured him that I didn't love William and only wanted to give him the chance to actually survive as a vampire, he let me keep him with us. And from that moment onward, I taught him everything I knew. I showed him how to play that game I had created, whilst my siblings and I were in Italy over three-hundred years before we had arrived in England. But what none of us knew was that I started to feel something for him because he was able to take his revenge on those that wronged him, while I was unable to because of Mikael hunting us down and my belief that Mikael had already killed Esther. But, of course, none of us knew that it was in fact Klaus that had killed her until over a thousand years after her death. Then, of course, she attempted to kill the lot of us, so it didn't really matter anymore." After letting out a sigh, she turned to Joseph as she said, "I haven't actually gotten the chance to thank you, Joseph."
With furrowed eyebrows, he asked her, "For what?"
She told him, "For doing this for me. For over a thousand years, I had yet to meet someone that was willing to help me move past, well, my past like you've been doing for me since we left New Orleans five years ago. So I wanted to thank you for doing this for me when you didn't even have to."
Joseph replied, "Oh, come on, of course I did. If I didn't, then who the hell would?" When she opened her mouth to respond, he said, "I swear, if you're about to say who I think you're about to say—"
With an eyebrow raised, she asked Joseph, "Why do you hate him so much?"
Joseph said to her, "I don't hate him. I just think you should be friends with someone that hadn't brutally murdered almost of all of his siblings before getting his ass sent to a prison world and left there for eighteen years. And then eighteen years later, killing what's left of his family and nearly getting his own daughter killed in the process." After seeing the way Annabelle looked at him, he said, "Fine. So I hate him. You can't blame me for hating him. Kai Parker is the most annoying piece of crap I've ever met in almost three-hundred years."
With a smirk on her face, she replied, "Don't let Kai hear you say that. Knowing him, he'll follow through on that threat and actually set you on fire."
With his eyes now wide, Joseph said, "What? He-He told you about that?" When she only smiled to herself before she started to walk away from the damaged home, Joseph quickly walked after her and asked her, "What-What else did he tell you?"
With an eyebrow raised, Annabelle replied, "Wouldn't you like to know?"
With a sigh, Joseph said to her, "Oh, come-come on, Annabelle. You can't just leave me in suspense here. What-What else did Kai tell you?"
Instead of responding, Annabelle quickly sped away from him, which got Joseph to sigh to himself before he went after her in an attempt to get her to tell him just what Kai Parker had told her before he and Dorothy left England.
* * *
With a shake of her head, Annabelle said, "It's not happening."
Joseph started to say to her, "But Annabelle—"
Annabelle replied, "But nothing, Joseph. Kol already wants to disembowel you and have Kai set you on fire as you sleep. I can only imagine how much angrier he'd become, if we were to get married and he wasn't there to see it for himself."
With a wave of his hand, Joseph said, "Okay, then bring him here. Bring him and Davina here, so that we can get married. You don't need everyone else in the family here to be a witness to our wedding. After all, the only person you care about in that family of yours is Kol. That's it."
Annabelle told him, "I care about Hope too, but she can't be here because if she's anywhere near Kol, there's no telling just what havoc could happen as a result of it." Just as he was about to respond, she said to him, "I'm not letting us marry each other until every single member of my family is there to witness it with their own eyes. And that is my final word on the matter, Joseph Valentine."
After Annabelle quickly turned her back on Joseph and left the room, Joseph raised his eyebrows before he started to chuckle to himself as he shook his head.
After letting out a sigh, he laid his head down on a pillow with his arms folded beneath his head with a grin on his face before he glanced down at Annabelle's phone when it started to vibrate from their bedside table.
He reached over towards the bedside table and picked up her phone before he looked at the screen to see an update about the disappearance of Hayley Marshall-Kenner.
According to Freya, Hayley's disappearance only happened because of Hope's apparent desperation to see her dad in person after seven years of not seeing him and going five years without hearing anything from him.
After letting out a sigh, he made a mental note to remind Annabelle to call Hope and try to offer her whatever advice she could on the matter.
* * *
1 year ago- Italy
With a sigh, Annabelle looked around herself with a frown on her face as she took in the sight.
The last time she had even been in Italy was in 1114 when her brothers and her sister had met with Alexander, a member of the Five that Rebekah had been interested in at the time before he and the other members of the Five were brutally murdered by Klaus after he attempted to keep the Mikaelson siblings down with a dagger to the heart.
She remembered all too well how she felt when they first arrived in Italy nine-hundred and eleven years ago.
She was not only still grieving for the deaths of her husband and children, but she was also so angry because it had only been a hundred and three years before their arrival in Italy that Kol had revealed to her that she was the one that murdered Atticus, Odin and Astrid.
That was one of the rare moments where she felt the angriest she had ever felt in her life.
Being daggered by a member of the Five didn't do much to help with the matter, which was why she started to play that game of hers shortly after the dagger was pulled out of her heart by Klaus.
While Annabelle continued to eye her surroundings, Joseph asked her, "Are you okay, Annabelle?"
As she looked over at him with a smile on her face, she said, "Of course. I was just thinking about what happened the last time I was here." When he only tilted his head in response, she told him, "The last time I was here, my siblings and I were each daggered by the Five in our sleep. Elijah, Kol, Rebekah, Finn and I were all put down by them. What the Five didn't know was that the dagger would do nothing to keep Klaus down. From my understanding, he seemed to be quite angry, due to the head of one of the Five mounted to my wall with blood coating the walls. Then, of course, I heard him screaming at Rebekah and demanding answers from her. Because of the reminder the head of the man had given me and made me think of my headless husband and children, I started to become angry."
After sighing to herself, she said, "My anger and my demons were starting to get control of me, but then I suppose fate had intervened. I heard a young woman screaming and soon enough saw her running from a slightly older man. The man had her pinned to a wall and the woman started to scream. It was only then that I intervened and killed him. Once she saw my face, she screamed and tried to run from me. I ran after her and once I caught her, I eventually got her to invite me into her home. Not long after I was granted the chance to enter her home, she and her entire family were all killed by me. I suppose that it was sometime after they were all dead that I started to consider it a game that I could use to pass the time and to ensure that my demons would have no control over me, which did work until I refused to play it the moment Mikael made me believe he had killed William over five-hundred years later." After letting out another sigh, she said, "After not being here for so long, it is quite odd for me to find myself back here when I was someone else entirely when we first got here all those years ago."
With a sigh, Joseph started to say to her, "Annabelle—"
With a shake of her head, she replied, "No, Joseph, you don't understand. For over a thousand years, I was a monster that didn't care for anyone. The only thing I cared about was having others fear me and having the same sort of control I had over others, just as Mikael and Esther had for me during the ten years they'd spent torturing me while I was human. I was granted the ability to choose who lived or who died. I could choose who I would grant my mercy to. And because of my mercy being nonexistent, I killed anyone I saw, no matter who they were." After a couple seconds of silence, she told him, "After I woke up and found out that the veil to the Other Side had been raised and Kol was gone once more, I was so angry that I resorted to killing two separate families. The first family I just brutally murdered by tearing into their throats. But what I did to the second family was far worse. The second family had a set of twins. The girl was older than her twin brother, just as I am older than Kol. So I compelled her to be seated and forced her to watch as I poured gasoline onto her family, but left her twin brother to be killed last. I killed him in front of her and asked how she felt. And you know what she told me?"
When Joseph didn't respond, she told him, "She said that it was terrible and she had never in her life ever felt anything like that before. After that, I asked her what she would have done, had I not compelled her to stay seated in her chair as she watched her entire family burn to death in front of her. Then she told me she would have killed me, if it weren't for my compulsion. And if it wasn't for me being a vampire, I had no reason to doubt that she would have. But I didn't say anything to comfort her. I simply laughed in her face before I compelled her to stay seated in that very same chair and not make a single sound. I told her the very thing I had never told anyone else. I told her that even though she would never admit to it, she would rather die than live a day without having her twin by her side before telling her that that was exactly how I felt when I watched Kol get killed. And after that, I set her home on fire and left. I wanted to watch the home become engulfed in flames and I was looking forward to seeing just that, but before I could, Rebekah came and snapped my neck. She snapped my neck and took me to New Orleans to help her with finding Elijah when he wouldn't return her calls." After sighing to herself, she said, "For over a thousand years, I was a monster that killed anyone. Whether it was for my own entertainment, because I was bored or because I felt as if one of the many families I killed had rubbed their happiness in my face didn't matter. I killed people, no matter who they were, because I could and because I knew there was nothing anyone could do or say that could make me hate myself any less or even any more than I already did."
After a couple seconds of silence, she said, "But after spending over a thousand years doing that, it was my agreement to work with Dorothy Sullivan long before Kol was killed that sent me down a different path. When I first met her and she was only sixteen, I didn't care about her. I only needed her to help me find William and make him pay for betraying me the way he had, and this was long before he went to New Orleans and sought me out. But then, of course, everything changed the moment Jeremy Gilbert had killed Kol. I no longer cared about finding William. The only thing I cared about was avenging Kol, no matter what it took. And it was because of me watching Kol die right in front of me that led me down to this path. If I hadn't met Dorothy Sullivan fifteen years ago, then none of this would even be possible. I wouldn't have gone to her and changed our arrangements on how to help one another and I wouldn't have gone out of my way to save Kai Parker from getting beheaded by Damon Salvatore twelve years ago. I wouldn't have cared. It was meeting Dorothy that made me start to truly care for the lives of others that weren't even part of my family."
As she started to smile up at him, she said, "If it wasn't for me even meeting her back when she was only a young siphoning witch that only wanted to help break her mother's best friend out of the prison world he was trapped in, I wouldn't have grown to care about her, Kai, or even you, for that matter. I wouldn't have opened myself up to the possibilities of actually being happy for the first time in over a thousand years. I wouldn't have met my two best friends, who have cared for me and have been more of a brother and sister to me than Klaus, Elijah and Rebekah had ever been my whole life. And life wouldn't have brought me you, the young vampire that has helped me far more than he knows, or ever will know."
After repeatedly blinking to himself, Joseph said, "Well, that certainly was something I didn't expect to hear from you today."
In response to his words, Annabelle smiled up at him before she grabbed him by the hand and said, "Now, come on. Last time I was here, Rebekah told me about this place in Italy. Brienno, I think it was. Let's go and take a look at it."
With his eyebrows furrowed, Joseph asked her, "Annabelle, are you sure?"
Annabelle replied, "Would you like for us to come and look at something that Rebekah had only told me about, or would you prefer to spend the rest of our time in Italy hearing me talk about just how much of a monster I was before even meeting Dorothy Sullivan?"
When Joseph only sighed in response, Annabelle grinned before she quickly sped towards her current destination, while Joseph's eyes only widened because of just how fast Annabelle was going.