Okay, so in my opinion there are not enough T-Bag stories out there. This is me contributing to that finally changing. Please read, review, and enjoy. I own nothing.
Chapter 1
"They think they know me, but they know nothing," thought Theodore, T-Bag, Bagwell nearly on a daily basis during his stay in Fox River Penitentiary. He had been there nearly a year and everyone thought they knew who T-Bag was, but they knew absolutely nothing. They only knew what he wanted them to know.
"He's a murderer…killed six to land himself in here," said the inmates who knew of him.
"He's a pedophile…raped and murdered a bunch of kids on the outside…not always in that order either," said the inmates leading the guards to think of him as even more of an animal because since entering prison walls he had already made someone his bitch proving that he would fuck anything that moved. But again, they only knew what he wanted them to know. T-Bag held his cards close to his chest, he kept the things that truly mattered where no one, but him knew. He knew how to keep a secret.
"They think they know me, but they know nothing," thought Theodore, T-Bag, Bagwell as his cell door closed his deepest secret still unknown to everyone, but him.
For T-Bag wasn't as cruel as everyone thought, he was human, he had feelings, and one of those feelings was love. Love was an emotion he wasn't always sure he could feel. It had once seemed like it was something that he was incapable of, but then he found someone that made him realize he was able to love. He was able to love and though she could do better, deserved better, he also learned that someone was capable of loving him back. As he laid in his cell after lights out that night, Teddy was thinking of the person that he loved, and thinking of her he couldn't help feeling sad. He was never going to see her again, at least, that's what it felt like sometimes when life in prison truly got to him. Many would think his love was Susan Hollander too. T-Bag now knew that what he thought was love with her had only been his imagination. Susan hadn't been a burning flame, but a mound of ashes. She had betrayed him, hurt him, and thinking back on it now Teddy realized he had been a fool to even think what they shared was love. He had in fact been searching for something that he had already found. And if he ever got out of this T-Bag swore he would make that bitch pay and then go in search of the woman he really loved who actually loved him.
Even thinking that he had ever loved her was in his own opinion the only stupid thing he had ever done and it was the only thing that he had done that he truly regretted. For he knew his real love, she would never have turned him into the police, she had never been anything, but faithful and loyal to him. And yet he hadn't been the same to her. He had loved her, he knew that without a doubt, but it hadn't been enough to keep him from hurting her. And he knew he had hurt her. Maybe not physically, never in his life would he lay a hand on her, but emotionally he had hurt her. He wanted to take all that back now and go back. He wanted to make it so he never met Susan Hollander and make it so he stayed with her. With his Lizzy where he truly belonged. Teddy didn't blame her if she never forgave him, but that didn't keep him from hoping. Hoping that maybe one day he would get a visitor and that visitor would just happen to be her. But he knew that would never happen. He had wronged her in the one way that he knew she would never forgive him for. And yet when he thought of her in the outside world, Teddy somehow couldn't picture her doing the same. He somehow knew she had been completely faithful to him since the day he left her, she hadn't been with another or loved another, crimes that he himself had committed against her. It made him love her more even as he wondered if he could ever do anything to make up for those crimes now.
"I love you, Teddy," Lizzy had said so many times as they lay in bed or simply ate dinner or even at the most random of times, her voice in his head the mere sound of it drawing his signature smirk to his lips.
The rest of her image soon followed and his smile grew even as his heart ached. As much as he loved thinking of her late at night when he would usually be with her, thinking of her made him sad too. Teddy loved her, he missed her, and being apart from her hurt him more than it ever had before he was locked up. He knew it was because when he'd been on the outside he had always planned to return to her. To see her again, even if only to get a divorce when he'd been so sure he loved Susan, but now all hope of that seemed to be gone. Now, he couldn't just go back to her whenever he wanted because he was doing a life sentence. His future with her had effectively been cut short and it was no bodies fault, but his own. And so, he missed her. Everything about her, from the way she walked to the way she smiled at him in the middle of the night in bed, the way she would smile at him the second their eyes met or laugh with her whole body in a way that was all her, but especially he missed the feel of her. Of her skin beneath his fingertips or beneath his lips as he kissed it as he made love to her. He missed her. He loved her. And he was never going to see her again. He was never going to see her smile or hear her laugh, her contagious beautiful laugh. She had this laugh that was as sweet and yet also somewhat bitter as her personality. All those things were exactly why he left though. His Lizzy had just been too perfect, for him at least. She had been like his other half, as flawed as him just in ways that he wasn't. They had understood each other without even trying. That was what made him love her and that was why he left. Because she was too good for him, too perfect, too much his equal. She couldn't be broken until he appeared in her life and somehow Teddy knew that's what he had done to her. He had broken her without ever wanting to. Lizzy was more than he deserved, the most beautiful wonderful woman he had ever known, and he vowed if he did ever find himself in front of her that he would somehow win her back. Because now maybe he thought that maybe the idea he had with Susan could be true with his Lizzy. Maybe he could make himself worthy of her.
T-Bag knew he didn't deserve her even as he was stalking her. She was always meant to be just another victim. Another scared woman in a dark place for him to have his way with and forget about the second he was done with her. But Elizabeth Addams Parker was far from that. His Lizzy as he liked to call her turned out to be more and something inside him told him she would be because she was the first woman he ever got sloppy with. She was the first to catch him in a mistake and learn that he wasn't some animal, but a man. She had somehow learned to love the man behind the beast.
"Well aren't you delicious," T-Bag remembered thinking that about her the first time he saw her from across a smoke-filled bar. She only happened to have caught him watching her and from the moment their eyes met and she gave him that sly smile that only belonged to her something had come over him. He had fallen slowly in love with her and when he did he didn't think she felt the same. Not until he took the ultimate risk of asking her the biggest question he had ever asked. Only then did he finally believe that it wasn't a lie, what they had was real, and she loved him as much as he had found he loved her. Through his charm, his finesse, he had managed to make her fall in love, and even stay in love with him even after she knew what he was.
T-Bag knew that was one of the things that more than anything else made him fall once and for all in love with her, for even when she knew what he did that he was a killer, a rapist, a pedophile, she still loved him in a way that as it turned out no other woman ever would; she hadn't tried to change him, but only continued to love him.
"And all she asked for in return was that I give her what she gave me," thought Teddy in that moment imagining her reaction that day when she had just woken up to find him gone. All she had wanted was him; all she had asked was that he love her and no one else, but her. And feeling sadness in his heart T-Bag's smile fell. He didn't do that and he knew she wouldn't forgive him.
He didn't blame her, he only wished he could fix what he did, and earn her forgiveness.
"But she won't because I write her every day. Every day for over a year and she has never responded. She hasn't sent them back though," thought Teddy knowing that despite not hearing back from her that he wouldn't stop writing her a letter every day. But that hope wasn't large because nearly a year of letters had been sent with no answer.
"I ruined it all," thought Teddy part of him feel that ache inside because he knew that would always be the one thing he couldn't deny. And yet that didn't mean he didn't dream of fixing it because he did. Lizzy was in his dreams almost every night that very night included. She was always on his mind wondering around asking him about things he knew she wanted to know somehow, but he knew he couldn't explain any of it to her in a letter. It had to be done in person; that was the only way to do it that she truly deserved. And that's really what his letters were. They were part of his hope, for with each one he sent he hoped one day he would get one back. And thinking of her that night he smiled again because he couldn't lose that hope because otherwise prison would be a lot worse than it already was. Thinking of her was one of the few things that kept him going.
"I wonder if you ever think of me, darling," breathed Teddy not realizing as the words he had been thinking left his very lips. T-Bag thought of her a lot, he wondered about her a lot, and he always hoped she thought of him too. And though he didn't know for sure, in all reality, Elizabeth did think of him. He was like a bug she couldn't kill, an addiction she couldn't break, and it didn't matter if she wanted to or not sometimes she couldn't help thinking about him. Sometimes he just popped into her head. That very night, Elizabeth was thinking of him as he lay in a cell thinking of her. Part of her wondered if he looked the same, if she saw him if she would recognize him, but most of all she wondered if he was okay. If prison had broken him or only made him stronger. Sometimes she was tempted to go the long journey to Illinois to see him, but she never did. She didn't know what she would say anyway. There were just too many questions left unanswered between them. But even that couldn't make her forget about him. Or even stop thinking of him and the time they had had. That was why that night she stared at the ceiling of her apartment as he stared at the ceiling of his cell each of them thinking of the other.
Teddy lurked through her mind like a ghost. But so, did Elizabeth. His Lizzy was always there just as he was, in his mind, in his heart; she made him want to be a better man. The very thought of each other inspired so many different thoughts, but they couldn't deny that one of those thoughts was always that they loved each other. Neither of them could change that. Elizabeth wished she could sometimes, but neither of them could change that. They shared something deep that couldn't be recreated. Something that he had ruined and that Elizabeth no longer believed in. For as far as she was concerned what they had had wasn't real. It had never existed; it had just been one of his cruel tricks.
"Why can't you just leave me alone," thought Elizabeth lying in bed that night thinking of him, of his letters that just kept coming; part of her just wanted it all to go away while another was afraid of that actually happening.
"It wasn't even real why can't it just fade away like all the other fake things you left behind," whispered Elizabeth her eyes wondering to her bedside table part of her wondering if she was crazy to even be thinking about her serial killer husband. She had fallen in love, married even a man who she knew to be a monster. And as she lay there then Elizabeth knew that as much as she tried to deny the other half of that truth, she couldn't.
She still loved him. Part of her would always love the man she was married to even if she knew him to be a monster. In a way, she had known that when she married him, but she hadn't cared. Instead she let it be, loved him anyway, and now it felt all for nothing. For he hadn't loved her back, he had only used her, and broken her heart. But despite that Theodore Bagwell still stood out among all the others that had tried to steal her heart, for he had succeeded. He had done things that no other man ever had. Teddy had a charm about him, a cleverness that no other man seemed to have before, but most of all he captivated her. He wasn't just some guy interested in fucking her and walking away, at least, that's what she thought. She could have a conversation with him. When he looked at her she felt like he was actually listening at the same time as he was running his eyes over her body. And she had liked that because no other guy had ever given her that before, it was always one or the other. Teddy was the only person she let call her Lizzy too. Before she met him she never dared let anyone get away with that, the world knew her as Elizabeth, and that was the way she wanted it. But the first time he called her Lizzy she couldn't bring herself to correct him. It just sounded so right coming from his lips in his sexy southern accent that she found for the first time in her life that she liked being called something other than Elizabeth. Even now she only allowed her Teddy to call her that. She still thought of him as her Teddy even as she tried to learn each day not to love him anymore. Part of her didn't think that was possible. Teddy may not have loved her, but she still loved him. She still thought of him at the worst times whether that be when she woke up every day or as she showered or any time in particular. She couldn't get over him even as mad as she was at him for breaking her the way he did. For she had been strong until he came into her life, but now he had broken her. Now, she didn't know how strong she really was. She had been foolish enough to think they shared something true. And god, how wrong she had been, for in all reality it hadn't been. Teddy used her. He played with her and hurt her in a way she always believed she was too strong for. And the worst part was she still loved him despite all the pain he had caused her. It had all been some sick game to him and yet even as she thought that there were things that didn't make sense.
There were still questions she couldn't answer that only Teddy could. Questions like why he didn't rape her, kill her or worse like all the rest? Why did he string her along the way he did? And then there was the most important question of them all, at least, to her. Why did he marry her? Elizabeth wanted the answer to all those questions, but she would never get them. She would never see Theodore Bagwell again because she didn't have the guts to go visit him behind prison walls.
"I won't let him hurt me anymore," thought Elizabeth seeing him in that moment in her head his eyes staring at her his smirk the same telling her how stupid she had been.
"How could I be that stupid?" whispered Elizabeth knowing that she couldn't put all the blame on him because part of it was her fault she had been stupid enough to fall for his tricks.
She was still really, really stupid because she still loved him. Elizabeth couldn't help just focusing on him in that moment. On his face, on his eyes, but most of all that smirk. Thinking of him in that moment it told her one thing that she wanted to deny so badly, but couldn't. She still loved him, so much. All those things that he had that made her love him still made her weak at the knees even when she was only thinking of him.
"My sweet, sweet Lizzy," Teddy used to say after they made love his eyes boring down into hers in the darkness his smile had seemed almost genuine; Elizabeth always knew that it had been those moments when she realized she loved him. Now, it was moments like that that broke her heart.
"Lizzy," said Teddy his voice haunting her from inside her head like it did all the time making her think that if things had been different she could have forgiven him, but he had done the one thing he had vowed not to. Elizabeth knew that he was her weakness. She always forgave him no matter what he had done. No matter what he did or how many he killed she forgave him. Hell, even when she found out he was wanted for rape and murder she still forgave him, and loved him all the same. She had loved him so much that Elizabeth always found she could forgive him anything, absolutely anything.
She forgave him for being what he was, a killer, a rapist even a pedophile, but then he did something that she couldn't forgive him for. He left her and he was not only found with another woman, the woman who turned him in, something she wouldn't have done that she didn't do even when she saw him on America's Most Wanted, and yet from what she had heard Teddy had loved this woman. Really loved this woman, Jimmy had said as much, and that was the one thing she couldn't forgive him for. Elizabeth just couldn't understand why he could love this woman while he had to pretend to love her. He had lied about everything they had had, but when he met Susan Hollander he decided to change. To be a better man, but with her he couldn't do that. What did Hollander have that she didn't? What was wrong with her? Those were only some of the questions going through her mind that she knew would go unanswered because they would never see each other again. And as those questions went through her mind that face still looked at her from her own mind.
It made her feel a deep sadness because that same thought echoed in her mind. Elizabeth still loved him, but it wasn't just that. She missed him too. She missed the tiny things that had made her fall for him, but most of all she just missed him.
"Missing him is all part of loving him," thought Elizabeth smiling for the first time that night; just thinking of him still brought a smile to her face. It echoed through her head as she fell asleep his eyes watching her within her own head his lips smirking at her.
They both fell asleep that way each remembering the way it had been before. Drifting into dreamland, Teddy remembered the way it was before when he would fall asleep next to her. Even in his bunk in Fox River, T-Bag could almost feel her body molded to his, he could feel her hair tickling his nose, and her head nestled tight beneath his neck. He could smell the faint hint of her perfume still clinging to her after a long day and her hands clinging to him as they slept. It helped him fall asleep part of him thinking that he would wake up to find the real woman by his side. Elizabeth felt it too. In a much comfier bed far away from him, Elizabeth could almost feel his arms around her in her sleep, she could smell the pure scent of his skin, and even hear his heartbeat in her ears. She could feel the hint of his fingertips on her skin tracing his name into her skin like he used to do as he fell asleep. Even as mad as she was at him it all still made her long for him to really be there in bed next to her.
"I love you, Teddy," said Elizabeth from inside T-Bag's head.
"Lizzy," said Teddy from within her head each haunting the other with their memory. In that moment, they were almost together if only in their subconscious. Teddy held hope that he would see her again even as she believed otherwise. Elizabeth was sure she would never see him again even if she did wish that she would, at least sometimes. Part of her wondered what would happen if their paths crossed again. One thing they both knew for sure was that whether they saw each other again or not they would never stop thinking about each other. That was why love hurt so much because once you found it you couldn't just forget about it. Teddy felt it most on those nights, but also in the mornings. The mornings were when prison didn't seem real.
"Teddy, sweetheart wake up," said Elizabeth her voice echoing through his mind making him wakeup in his cell just like it did every morning.
For a moment T-Bag would open his eyes expecting to see his Lizzy's smile waiting for him, but every time it turned out differently. He always found himself in his cell, Maytag asleep below him, and it was then when no one was looking that he let his sadness show. He would lay in his bunk her voice still in his head along with her very image and miss her more than anything. Teddy would long for her touch, the sight of her face, the smell of her skin, and the glow of her smile. He would long to kiss her, hold her, and make love to her. Lizzy would be all he would think of and it made his mornings a perfect combination of heaven and hell. It was a combination he wasn't sure if he loved or hated. He would remember all the mornings spent with her. How she looked when her eyes first opened always holding a dull shine first thing in the morning. How she would smile when he kissed her good morning her arms laying lazily around his neck. But most of all he would think of the way she looked as she sat on his lap over breakfast both of them smiling as they fed each other. It all made him miss her more even as they made him smile. T-Bag did cherish those memories of her, they were another thing that gave him hope that he would see her again; that he would earn her forgiveness. Because he loved her. He loved her in a way that he had never loved another person in his life. No one behind these walls knew about her, she was his secret, it was his way of keeping her safe.
"If no one knows about her, no one can hurt her," thought Teddy constantly whenever he thought of her and no one knew what he was thinking as he stared off into space. Teddy was determined in that. He would never allow anyone to hurt her, he didn't care if he had to break out of Fox River to do it, he would protect her. If anyone ever laid a hand on her he would kill them, he would kill them slowly making them the perfect example of what happened when you crossed Theodore, T-Bag, Bagwell. She was his weakness, he knew that, and if anyone crossed the line by hurting her he would become their worst nightmare. That was why he never spoke of her, only with Jimmy did he even mention her. He kept her in the safest place in that whole prison, his heart, a place that others had always thought as dark as coal, but she had seen was as red as any other man's. Sometimes he thought just writing her was putting her in danger or saying her name on the phone with Jimmy was too much. But he needed those letters, those calls to know she was alright. That someone knew she was alright. Hell, no one even knew he had a wife, and he kept it that way. Jimmy was the only one who ever spoke to him about her. Who had ever dared to ask him why he married her and who he had ever dared to tell the truth. He had married her because he loved her. They had something that he thought he had with Susan Hollander, but that he now knew didn't even come close. Yeah, T-Bag knew that was the definitive truth that he married her because he loved her. And it was because he loved her that no one within prison walls could know about her. No one behind these walls would know about her.
And Elizabeth found her mornings just as tough. Like him, she would always find herself lost in thoughts of the mornings she had spent with him. Happy mornings when she had been sure that she could trust him, when she had been sure he would be the man she spent the rest of her life with. That all seemed so silly now. Part of her missed that, missed him in the morning. She wanted to go back to that even if it had been nothing, but an allusion. A fake love was better than never having loved at all, she thought, sometimes when she first opened her eyes turning her head almost expecting to find him smiling at her. Things had been a lie then, but she couldn't deny they had been good too. She wanted to go back to when things had been good. To mornings when he would make love to her before the sun had even rose. To the feeling of his hands as he held her afterward. To the kiss of his lips as he whispered her own name into her temple. To mornings full of hot shared showers, morning kisses that took her breath away, and breakfast on his lap both of them finding it hard not to smile. But what she missed most was the happiness. The way he made her feel and even if it had been fake Elizabeth felt a great fear in her heart when she thought of those times. Would she ever feel anything like that ever again? Part of her was afraid she wouldn't.
"Why do I still miss you?" said Elizabeth to herself as she finally rose from her bed her head turning to stare at what would have been his side of the bed. Again, that was all part of missing him, of missing what she thought they had, the fake love he had tricked her into.
"You made me happy all the same…maybe that's why," whispered Elizabeth rising to take a shower that face in her mind again.
"I do miss you, Teddy…how stupid would you say that makes me?" thought Elizabeth the shower water turning on as the thought left her head. It was something that sometimes she wanted to forget, to forget all about him, especially when she remembered that none of it had been real.
"I love you still too. You'd probably say I was stupid for that," thought Elizabeth stepping into the shower closing her eyes as memories of him ran through her mind. It was like a film reel.
A film reel of slow kisses to wake her up in the morning, of him coming up behind her as she cooked whispering naughty things into her ear to make her grin, and even the few times they had actually done those naughty things letting breakfast, lunch or dinner burn. None of those quite compared though to her favorite memory, but also the one that made her the most confused. For it left her with the most questions even as it was the one that she thought might be able to answer that question. Why did he marry her? The memory behind that played through her mind all the time. It had been a regular morning except for the way she woke up to find him already showering without her. She had just gotten out of bed herself when he appeared behind her whistling in that way he did though this was the only time he ever did it while she was wearing clothes. That whistle had made her turn around and that was when she saw him leaning in the bathroom doorway in nothing, but a towel this unknown look in his eye. He looked almost hesitant to come near her, scared, but only almost.
"Everything alright, Teddy?" whispered Elizabeth watching him as he came closer that look still in his eye as he stared her down as if unsure of what to say or do or even how to say it. But then his hands had just been on her. They had been swift, he had been swift getting her on the bed his hands pinning her to the bed, and as they looked at each other he had just said it. Said it so low that she almost didn't hear him.
"Would ya marry me?" Teddy had whispered leaving her to stare at him waiting for that smirk of his to tell her he was joking. But he hadn't been.
Teddy had been completely serious, she knew that the more she watched him. When she saw the frown that dug into his skin when she didn't answer right away. It was as she realized that he was serious that she realized her answer.
"Yes," said Elizabeth her voice cracking with emotion especially when that smile of his finally appeared. He made it all feel so real, it was hard to believe it hadn't been. The way Teddy had kissed her, loved her, held her as if he was afraid to lose her. The way he kissed her when the judge pronounced them man and wife. That had felt, so real. And yet he had been gone four months later. What Elizabeth didn't realize was that it had been real and she didn't know it, but Teddy did know that it would be a long time before she believed that.