A/N: Okay, I fibbed. This'll be three parts. Thanks for the great feedback on chapter one and please leave a review and let me know what you think of this chapter.


The next visiting day, a warden came to his cell. "Bates," he grumbled, "Yer wife's here to see you."

After thinking long and hard about it, Bates knew he had to make this a clean break. Continuing to see her, to write to her... it would only prolong the pain and give her hope that he'd change his mind. And as much as he wanted to give in to her pleas, to let her continue loving him from behind the prison walls, Bates simply could not continue to do that to Anna.

"I don't wish to see her," he said quietly.

The warden grunted. "Woman rides a bus every fortnight to come visit you, you should have the decency to go talk to her."

"It's none of your concern."

"Well it ain't really your choice now is it?" the man demanded, grabbing Bates up by a piece of his shirt and bodily dragging him from his cell. Knowing he could not win against the warden, Bates gave up the fight and limped towards the visitor's area without protest. The warden followed close behind him and moments later, he pushed Bates into the chair in the barred room across the table from Anna.

"There you are, ma'am," the warden told her, touching his fingers to the brim of his hat before leaving them alone.

"God, what have they done to you?" Anna gasped at the sight of her husband.

Most of the bruises from the previous week's beating had faded to ugly greens and browns, but they were still clearly visible. She reached out to touch her hand to his face but stopped herself with a glance at the guard. Touching was against the rules and might earn him more abuse at their hands.

Without thinking, he responded, "You have a few fans among the wardens who didn't like how I treated you last time."

The moment the words left his mouth, he regretted them. Already looking tired and sad and like the world was planted firmly on her shoulders, Anna deflated under the suggestion that he'd been beaten because of her.

"I'm sorry," he breathed, "I shouldn't have said that. None of this is your fault."

Ignoring his statement, she put her hands on the table in front of her and declared, "I spoke with your solicitor this week."

His eyes widened. Then she'd seen the divorce petition. She knew exactly what he was about.

"Did you sign it?"

"Of course not," she scoffed. "But the way you made it sound before, I wanted to talk to him. And now I know the truth."

The truth was, he had no grounds to seek a divorce from Anna. The solicitor had told him the only way would have been to accuse her of adultery and come up with some evidence to prove it. But Anna Bates had never been unfaithful to him, not in body or in spirit, and he flatly refused to even pretend otherwise. The divorce from a convicted murderer would be enough of a stain on her character; he would not add to it.

"Draw up a petition for her to sign," Bates had suggested instead. "Allege whatever you need to get her out of this. Desertion, cruelty - whatever you can think of - and I'll swear to it under oath."

The solicitor had known Bates for some years, having advised the man on how to extract himself from Vera's clutches. He knew the incarcerated man had no wish to lose his wife, not this wife, but Bates felt obliged to set her free of a most improvident marriage.

"I can say that you threatened her harm if she didn't marry you, and that by your incarceration you have abandoned her both bodily and financially. But ultimately, these will have to be her allegations, Mister Bates. You can stipulate to what you're saying as facts, but you'll have to convince her to file the petition for divorce..."

"Did you really think I would sign my name to those horrible lies?" Anna demanded. "You think I would accuse you of those things?"

Of course he hadn't thought she would, not really. But he'd hoped. He hoped that when presented with an escape from the farce of a marriage he'd trapped her in, that she would seize it and get as far away from him as she could.

"I think you should sign it," he said. "You should sign it, you should walk out of here, and you should never look back."

But she was ready for his arguments.

"If we're going on 'shoulds' then I should never have fallen in love with you all those years ago, shouldn't I? But I did. And you fell in love with me, remember?"

He said nothing. Anna waited in silence, but Bates kept his eyes glued to the table between them.

"Is there someone else?" she asked finally, almost so quiet that he couldn't hear her over the distant conversations of the other inmates and visitors in neighboring cells.

Someone else? Aside from the absolutely absurd question of how he would meet another woman while imprisoned, Bates could not conceive of Anna ever believing that was the heart of his decision.

He shook his head. "Of course not."

"Because I would only let you go if I thought there was someone else." She paused, unable to catch her breath. "I wouldn't do what Vera did. I wouldn't trap you-"

"There is someone," he found himself saying.

"What?" Anna blinked at him in surprise, and he knew that she never really believed there was a rival for his affections. But now she was unsure and the uncertainty in her eyes hurt so much to witness..

"There is a woman. She's young and beautiful and full of kindness. She comes to visit me frequently, and she writes to me." Bates paused, taking a breath. "I love her, Anna. I love her more than life itself. But despite loving her, despite wanting only the best of everything for her, I've managed to ruin her life."

"John-" she tried to interrupt, realizing who he was talking about.

But he continued, "She wasted so many years waiting for me so we could be together. And for the past three years, she's had to endure being the wife of a convicted murderer. She's had to put up with the stares and whispers behind her back, her name printed in the paper. She gave up her future by marrying me. She gave up having someone to share her home and her bed, she gave up the possibility of children to be my wife."

He paused, the very force of his words making it difficult to breath. "All of this she endures, she endures without complaint or recrimination, because she loves me. Now tell me, Anna, what about me is worth so much pain and sacrifice? Truly? What about the man sitting before you is worth so much heartache?"

Anna said nothing for several minutes. His words had left him dizzy and red-faced, perspiration dotting his forehead. He waited for her to speak, held her gaze with hard eyes, his hands clasped together so hard that his knuckles burned white from the force of his grip.

Finally, Anna spoke. "I told you once, after the trial, that I'd do it all again. I'd marry you again were we not already married. We didn't know then what would happen, if you would live or die. Perhaps you thought I only meant it if you were hung, but I didn't. I meant it no matter what."

Taking a deep breath, she favored him with a smile as she went on, "I am so proud to be your wife. You are the best man I have ever known and the only man I will ever love. I don't want to be with anyone else. Not ever. I don't want to have another man's children or sleep in another man's bed. I want you. And if all we ever have is an hour a week and as many letters as we can write, then that is the life I want."

"Anna-"

"I love you, John Bates. You are worth everything to me, absolutely everything. And I don't care if you're in here for another three years or another thirty years. I will stand by your side every one of them."

Shaking his head, he said, "I can't do that to you, Anna."

With a deliberately dismissive shrug, Anna declared, "It's done. We are married, Mr. Bates. For better or worse, you are my husband, and I don't regret it. Loving you has been the greatest joy of my life and I won't give you up. You have no way to be rid of me, not if I refuse to sign those papers. Your solicitor told me as much. You can return my letters and refuse to see me when I visit you, but that won't stop me from loving you."

Bates heard the warden unlock the barred door to their small visiting room behind him a second before he heard the words he both longed for and dreaded. "Visit's over."

If asked later, Bates would not have been able to explain why he did it. Maybe it was to comfort his strong but shattered wife, to offer some confirmation of the love she'd spoken of. Maybe he did it to steal just a moment's contact so long denied to them, perhaps their last contact if he had his way in convincing her to move on. But moving quickly, he reached across the table and took Anna's glove-clad hands in his own. She stared at him in shock and alarm.

They'd snuck touches a few times before, but usually the wardens were too watchful for them to get away with it often. Bates did it this time in full view of the warden who'd brought him from his cell, the one who so disliked him. He knew what would happen.

"No touching!" the warden shouted, dragging Bates back from the table. Another warden appeared in short order and he was grateful that they took him out of Anna's sight before the beating began.


They suspended his visitation privileges for two months after the stunt he pulled, touching his wife's hands. Bates decided it was just as well because he did not want Anna to see his black, swollen eye, and how badly he now limped.

But they let him have her letters.

He broke down and read the two he'd previously set aside. They both said the same things Anna had told him at their last visit. She loved him. She would not consent to a divorce. She had no wish to be rid of him. She loved him.

She loved him.

She must have written the words fifty times in each letter.

She also admonished him for trying to remove him from her life. She did not outright confess to the pain he'd caused her, but she did let her anger be known.

Her third letter came a few days later, written after their latest visit. This note proved more emotional as Anna asked about the bruises she'd seen on him and the angry wardens who'd taken him away. She agonized over what had been done to him and the part she'd played in upsetting the wardens. Her guilt tore a hole in his heart and he vowed to never again let her see him injured.

If he let her see him again at all.

A selfish, shameful side of him wanted to simply accept her words and let her carrying on loving him. But Bates was still not convinced that continuing on the way they'd been was best for her. Although Anna had informed him with no uncertainty that she would not seek the divorce, he wondered if it still wouldn't be better to let her have some time away from him. Perhaps with some distance, she'd be more willing to let him go.

One of the guards had even given him the suggestion of, "You could always just kill yourself. That'd free her up, sure 'nough."

In truth, he had never considered suicide, not once since his conviction. Removing himself permanently from the world would certainly solve Anna's problems where he was concerned. She would be a widow rather than a divorcee, and his death would force her to give up on him just as surely as if he'd been executed.

But he knew it would also destroy her, utterly and completely. If he killed himself in prison, that act would reach out through the bars and across the distance to Downton and crush her very soul. She would take the blame on herself because she would know why he'd done it - to free her. He'd known men in the army who committed or attempted suicide, and he remembered the regret and grief-ridden faces of the loved ones they left behind.

Bates simply could not inflict such inhuman guilt on Anna, not even for what he considered to be her own good. Such an action would be too cruel, and he feared she might never recover. No, as much as he might suffer living out his remaining years behind bars, enduring the self denial of her love, it would be far too selfish to end his own misery at the expense of Anna's.

He would content himself with his memories of her, the images burned into his mind of every moment they shared.

He did not write her back. While it felt selfish to read her letters without sending her ones in return, he couldn't do it, not in light of what he was trying to accomplish. Besides, what would he say? How could he tell her better in written form than what he'd said during their visits?

But about a week after their last visit, Bates received another letter from Anna.

This one contained news.


TBC

A/N: Regarding a suggestion someone made about Mr. Bates committing suicide to truly "free" Anna - I decided to address that issue within the story. While I could realistically see the character being driven to consider such an act of desperation, ultimately I don't think he'd do it (for the reasons I gave in the story).