, I consider Robert Knepper, who played the monstrous Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell in
, one of the finest actors in the world today. His acting and portrayal of the nefarious, villainous T-Bag was probably forty percent of the reason I watched
But if all Theodore Bagwell was was a villain, I would have quickly lost interest in him--and in the show. One of the things about him that was so compelling was his nascent struggle to find goodness, peace, and truth. In the original series he failed time and again, and in the end went back to prison. While an escapee from Fox River, after all, he killed almost indiscriminately. He deserved what he got, most assuredly.
The latest revival of the series revealed a paroled T-Bag who clearly had made strides towards finding himself and his soul, and the goodness cowering in the dark corners of his violent life. But in the end his violent streak once again won out, and back to Fox River he went once more. That was where the series literally ended--showing him in the same cell as Michael Scofield's tormentor and abuser, the traitorous Jacob Anton Ness, AKA "Poseidon." The series centered around Scofield's plans to get out of the Middle Eastern prison he was stuck in and get back to America and bring Ness to justice, who had married his love, Dr. Sara Tancredi.
It seems that if you factored out Bagwell's violent proclivities, you'd get a man with an intelligence the equal of Scofield's, who was continually touted to be a genius. What made Bagwell so dangerous--and ultimately so stupid--was his use of that intelligence for evil and destructive means. What made him so much more compelling than Michael Scofield was his efforts, many times halting or postponed, to free himself of his demonic, blunt, stupid nature. It is for that reason that I have decided to write a fan-fiction tribute to Theodore Bagwell. I'd like him to receive, finally, redemption and freedom from that nasty side of himself.
(Please note that I am fully aware of the sexual assault allegations against Robert Knepper. This fan-fiction tribute is by no means offered as a slap in the face to sexual assault survivors, like I am myself, or to the #MeToo movement, which I fully support. Also: I strongly believe that, legally, the accused are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. I hope you, the reader, support that essential foundation of democracy too.)
Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell, convicted murderer, is released from Fox River Prison to help Michael Scofield, whom he once swore a blood feud against, in Scofield's efforts to bring to justice one "Poseidon," the CIA spook who incarcerated him and married his beloved, Sara Tancredi. Scofield even funds a new prosthetic hand for T-Bag, a beyond-the-top-of-the-line marvel that behaves just like any normal one but is many times stronger.
But that isn't the greatest gift Scofield gives him. For T-Bag has a son, one he never knew he had. David--"Whip"--had been Scofield's cellmate while both languished for the past five years in a brutal prison in Yemen.
The plan is hatched, the play unfolds, and David dies just days after Theodore finds out about him. Enraged, he once again lets the demon light the candle in the window of his soul, and kills the CIA spook responsible.
We leave Theodore Bagwell in his cell back in Fox River. His new cellmate is none other than Poseidon himself. This is where we rejoin him and his efforts at redemption. This is where the candle in the window waits to be re-lit.
Was prayer enough for a man like him? Was there a point in a
sinner’s life when God stopped listening?
He sat at the edge
of the cement bunk, head in his hands.
“C’mon back,” he
muttered. “I can feel you.” He closed his eyes.
There they were:
the teenagers he’d slaughtered so long ago. Their dead stares eternally accused,
their blood-streaked visages pale-blue, like ghosts. He’d been haunted by them every
single day since.
“But not nearly
long enough. Not nearly long enough. Not nearly, dear Lord, long enough.”
Human life had a
price, one he was once more than happy to pay. It was like walking the aisles
of Walmart, and he didn’t give a damn if anybody was hurt.
That wasn’t right,
no. He wanted to see their pain. He wanted to see them cry and beg. It was boiling
bile poured into a vessel that demanded to be filled but never could be.
The judge actually
smiled when she pronounced his three back-to-back life sentences. “Want to know
why I’m smiling right now, Mr. Bagwell?”
“No, Your Honor.”
Behind him, outraged
sniffles of the surviving parents, relatives, and friends littered the silence.
The courtroom was packed. It was the most popular he’d ever be in his entire wretched
life.
“I’ll tell you why,
Mr. Bagwell. Because where you’re going, pedophiles do not last long. Where
you’re going, people like you often commit suicide instead of serving their full
time. Where you’re going, hopelessness reigns supreme. And when you finally and
gratefully pass from this earth, I know that the Ultimate Judge will impose an
eternal sentence upon you to make mine appear insignificant. That’s why I’m
smiling, Mr. Bagwell.”
The courthouse erupted
in applause. Bailiffs led him out of court. The door was just closing when the
judge began slamming her gavel for order.
“ ‘Woe to the worthless shepherd,’ ” he cried
in the dark. “ ‘Woe to the worthless
shepherd who deserts his flock! May the sword strike his arm and his right eye.
May his arm be completely withered, his right eye totally blinded!’ ”
As the faces of
those dead children continued accusing, he thought of what he told Susan the day
she came to confront him. Her visage had stuck with him ever since.
“That dirty bastard
came home, Susan,” he wept into his hands. “There
was a candle in the window, and it was lit. It wanted me to walk up those
steps. Teddy was back! Welcome back, Teddy! Welcome back!”
Prison life, in a
brutal, almost sensical way, suited him. It wasn’t for rehab. He knew that from
the many other times he’d been in lock-up. It wasn’t really for retribution,
either. Not for ones as rotten as him, of which in this jail there were maybe
half a dozen. Prison officials and bulls knew he was beyond rehabilitation.
More often than not the true demons inside prison walls became unofficial
employees of the state. Those who could be broken with punishment—for good or
evil—were “contracted out” to the monsters to be dealt with. Drugs, whores,
cushy prison industry gigs, and the like was how they were compensated. All completely
unvocalized, of course, but understood nonetheless.
As for
rehabilitation ... well, no one in this god-forsaken sewer really believed
that, did they? It was, after all, called the penal system, not the rehab
system.
He escaped Fox River with Michael Scofield and six others. None were
monsters like him, including mobster John Abruzzi or Scofield’s brother,
Lincoln Burrows, who was sitting his ass on death row for murdering the vice
president’s brother.
That’s how monsters
used to be dealt with.
Burrows wasn’t a
monster. But he’d just been set up by them. By free monsters. By what others
called “civil servants.”
“They shoulda fried
me like bacon,” he murmured. “But I got in just under the wire.” The state
hadn’t reinstated the death penalty when the good judge sentenced him. The
public outcry over his life sentence was ...
“... Understandable.”
He looked up. He
could just see the opposite wall eight feet away. “They understand. Ain’t no
penal system for the likes of Teddy Bagwell.”
He stared down at
his hands. His hands.
He lifted the left
one and inspected it. Scofield had been responsible for him losing the one he
was born with. A little more than six months ago, in his usual, cryptic way, Scofield
gave him this one—this metal and electronic marvel, shiny and silver, and much stronger
than his native one.
It responded just
like that one did—like part of him had stopped growing flesh and bone, and had
grown metal instead. He opened the palm and stared at his dim visage in the
reflection.
He had gone on a
blood feud against Scofield while the “Fox River Eight,” as the escapees were
known all over America, worked at eluding the massive manhunt. And for that
blood feud he had ultimately been sent back to prison. He had let the demon
light the candle in the window one too many times. He had threatened Scofield’s
woman with rape, had tied her up and smacked her angel face and made ready to
let that demon come out and play again.
Justice, which
seemed to bend to Pretty’s will every time, came a-callin’ shortly after. And
there Teddy went back to Fox River after Justice
extended his life sentence three more times for his many murderous misdeeds while
outside these walls.
But Scofield wasn’t
done with him—which somehow meant that Justice wasn’t either. Five years in he
was called to see the warden, who excused himself from his own office. Men in dark
blue suits waited. One slammed a sheaf of papers down in front of him. “We’re
releasing you, Mr. Bagwell. Sign these forms and you’re a free man.”
He signed them. An
hour later he was escorted to the gates. The warden, waiting there, made his
outrage plain. “You’ll be back in here inside of a month, Bagwell. It’s in your
nature. You can’t help yourself. You’re no good. There is no hope for you. See
you soon.”
He recalled thinking
of the night a couple of years back when the lights in the cellblock dimmed and
brightened, dimmed and brightened, as fifty thousand volts coursed through General
Kranz’s body in the Kill House.
“No, sir. You won’t.”
He’d meant that
with every fiber of his being.
He turned and
walked away.
There was nobody to
pick him up. He had nowhere to go. But as he gained the curb, a black Lincoln towncar pulled
up. The passenger-side window rolled down. The man, wearing sunglasses, said,
“Get in.”
To show him he was
serious, he opened his blazer just enough to reveal a .45.
“I’m exchangin’ six
life terms and a hundred sixty-five years for somethin’. I guess this is it.”
The man didn’t
respond.
Was that
“something” a quick execution at the hands of what had to be the FBI? It seemed
likely, almost certain.
He took a deep
breath, reached for the back door handle, opened the door, and climbed in. The
driver didn’t wait; he punched the accelerator and the door, from the momentum,
closed by itself.
“The Langham,
gentlemen, if you please,” he said, settling himself. “And don’t worry about
steppin’ on it.”
Neither responded.
The driver glanced once in the rearview mirror, but that was it. He too was
wearing sunglasses, even though they weren’t necessary. It was a thoroughly
gloomy day.
He expected them to
drive into the country, order him out of the vehicle, and cap his ass near a
ditch. But they headed straight for downtown. Forty minutes later they stopped,
unbelievably, in front of the Langham.
The one in the
passenger seat turned and tossed something to him—a Smartphone.
“Get out.”
They appeared to be
in absolutely no mood to wait, so he opened the door and climbed out. The car
squealed from the curb before he was fully out, the back door slamming shut
again. He tripped and fell, falling to his side. Two passing young women were
there immediately, and helped him to his knees, and then to stand. “Are you
okay, sir? Are you okay?”
His good hand was
scraped and bloody, and two fingers on the prosthetic had broken off. They lay
on the concrete of the sidewalk between them.
One picked them up and
handed them to him with a look of disgust. “Here.”
“Thank you. Thank
you kindly, ladies.”
“What an asshole!” the
other one yelled, flipping off the sedan as it disappeared around a corner.
“Where are cops when you need them?”
“Nowhere I want to
be,” he answered, his hand stinging. He thanked them for their concern once
more and went cautiously into the hotel.
He was dressed as
an ex-con—denim workshirt and jeans—and was sneered at as such. He tried not to
pay attention to it. Before glancing at the Smartphone, he examined the broken
stubs of prosthetic fingers in his good hand.
“What kind of
trials and tribulations do you got planned for me now, Lord?” he murmured under
his breath.
He stuffed the
fingers into his pocket.
The doorman spied
him and came up to him. “Sir,” he offered. “I saw what just happened.” He
pointed. “There’s a restroom just past the lobby to the left. Please go ahead.”
“Thank you.”
Once in the
bathroom, he put his scraped hand under cold water, hissing with the sting, and
then dried it off using paper towels. The wound still bled, so he put a fresh
towel over it and walked back out into the lobby.
The Smartphone, in
his back trousers pocket, was undamaged. He found a free coffee table and set
it on top of it. With some effort (he didn’t want to get blood on it), he turned
it on and opened the only icon on the screen after locating the on switch and
waiting for it to boot up. A text message waited:
Central mail: Post office box: #3459
Cain Savings and Loan: account number 45-a233/9hh
Amount: $150,000
“Well, I’ll be,” he
said, studying the information. He grabbed the device and made for the front
desk, where a young woman behind the front desk smiled nervously at him as he
approached. It was a smile he was very used to, one that said, You are terrifying. Please don’t talk to me.
“Hello, darlin’.”
“How can I help you
today?” she asked, avoiding his steady gaze.
“I’d like to book a
room at this fine establishment, but I’m not sure I’ve got my account
information completely ... well, let’s just say it’s a new account.”
She spied the Smartphone.
“You can pay with that if you’d like. Just type in Langham.com and book right
there on the front page!”
“I’m not really
handy with this newfangled techno-whiz stuff,” he said, looking her over.
“Would you mind if I stayed here and tried it with your kind tutelage, should I
need it?”
“Certainly, sir,”
she answered immediately.
He stepped aside to
let her assist other patrons. Device on the countertop, he managed to get on
the Web. When the hotel’s webpage popped up, he clicked the Stay With Us link and followed the
prompts. He booked a suite (why not?) for a week (again, why not?) and went to
pay.
Here goes nothin’, he thought, and
entered the bank account number. It was already difficult to do with one good
hand; it became doubly difficult with loose paper towel getting in the way.
“Well, I’ll be,” he
grinned past his frustration when the page came back with: “Welcome to the
Langham, Theodore! Please check in with the front desk to secure your key. Let
us treat you to the finest stay you will ever have in Chicago!”
“That I will, that
I will,” he murmured. He glanced up at the desk girl, who was once again alone
and gazing uncertainly at him. “Says here I’m all booked up, darlin’. What
next?”
“What is your name,
sir?”
“Theodore Bagwell.”
She typed it in
with practiced ease. Her face creased in a frown for a moment, probably when
she saw that he had booked a penthouse suite, which meant she was treating
someone poorly who could easily get her fired. Her smile, which she directed at
him a moment later, was much wider, the nervousness well-hidden. “I’ve got you
all registered, Mr. Bagwell. Let me get you a key quick.” She reached beneath
her and produced a card, which she lay on the counter. “Do you have bags today
we can bring up?” It was obvious she was trying not to stare at his damaged
prosthetic or at his other hand, of which blood was now soaking through the
paper towel wrapped around it.
“Not today, Cari,”
he said, reading her name tag. “But thank you kindly anyway. Could you direct
me to a clothier, and perhaps the elevator to my floor?”
“Absolutely,” she
replied. “Across the mall is a Slate ...”
“A ... what?” he
interrupted.
“Slate,” she said
apologetically. “Um ... men’s clothes. Nice. Just across the mall.”
“And the elevator?”
She pointed to her
right. Just take any of them to the thirty-sixth floor.”
“Thank you kindly,
Cari.”
“My pleasure, Mr.
Bagwell. Have a pleasant stay.”
A couple of basic shirts and trousers. A new belt. Walkin’
shoes. Socks and underwear. All paid with from cash he shouldn’t have and taken
back to a suite he shouldn’t have been allowed to get anywhere near.
He pulled the
key-card from his pocket at the same time he noticed a manila envelope halfway
under the door. He studied it for a moment before bending to pick it up.
“Nothin’ is for
free. Never bought it for a second. Here we go.”
Nothing on its
front, not even his name. He opened the door, dropped the bags on a seat next
to the window, and opened it.
“Well, I’ll be,” he
muttered.
It wasn’t his nature to happily submit to having his strings
pulled, so a week later and a new lease on a modest studio apartment downtown, he
found him—Lincoln.
After wading through the standard threats against his life, he showed him the
photo. The one that came with the other documents. The ones he wouldn’t share with
anyone except their probable author, whom he had once sworn a blood feud
against.
Two months later
came hyper-advanced surgery and a brand new hand. “Outis” was the financier,
but he had no illusions who that was. It enraged him, because he went into debt
with no man, especially that one, and
because he couldn’t verify that it was, in fact, Scofield. Scofield who,
somehow, from whatever hole he was hiding in, managed to get him sprung from
the state pumpkin patch and had enlisted the aid of law enforcement, and had
stuffed a new bank account with enough scratch to begin a new life.
Nothin’ is free, he reminded himself
over and over again as the play gradually unfolded and his part in it became
clear. Especially when it concerns Pretty.
Indeed, it wasn’t.
It wasn’t a coincidence that his new bunkmate was “Poseidon”
himself. Jacob Anton Ness, Scofield’s nemesis, had himself fallen victim to
Pretty’s smarts and seemingly infinite guile.
Ness
didn’t survive the night. That was part of the deal. That was the deal. With his new hand and its
nearly superhuman grip, he crushed Ness’
windpipe in one swift move and watched him gurgle purple and lifeless over the
toilet.
It was much easier
and more pleasurable than he ever could’ve imagined. He had lost a son—one he
never knew existed—to Ness and his traitorous
little cabal of spooks, and once again the ol’ demon lit that candle, and once
again he couldn’t resist it. Scofield knew he wouldn’t. Perhaps that was the only reason for the prosthetic. He
wouldn’t put it past him.
Pretty would of
course be told. The news would get to him. Would Pretty dial up ol’ Justice one
more time and get him sprung again?
The warden hadn’t
greeted him when he was readmitted. It was his way of saying, See, Theodore? I told you. This isn’t news,
so I won’t make it news. But he was there when the bulls led him in chains
to solitary. He was waiting at the door to the cell, arms crossed.
“Take a good look,
Theodore, because this is your new home. No more gen-pop. This is where you’re
going to spend the rest of your life. This is where you’ve always belonged.”
He motioned resignedly
at the guards. “Put him in.”
His cell was at the
end of a long hallway. The large rectangular metal door looked almost blended
in with the surrounding block and opened with an old-fashioned key, which one
guard extracted and placed into the keyhole and turned. The lock buzzed
electronically and clicked. The guard pulled the door open, and another pushed
him inside. There they unchained him. The warden had already left.
Four months passed.
Had Scofield forgotten about him?
Perhaps Scofield
had washed his hands of him once and for all and had gone back to Doctor Prissy
and her tight angelic butt cheeks, and left him here to rot. After all, what
further use was he to him? Always an opponent of lethal violence, Scofield had
been a different man when it came to Ness. Was
he changing, adding brutality to his All Pro guile?
The demon cried out
to light the candle again, but for four grueling months now Teddy had refused
to heed it. The demon wanted him to rekindle that blood feud, but he couldn’t
let himself do it. The reason why stared him in the face every single moment of
every single miserable day in this empty bit of purgatory.
He gazed at his
metal hand again. It was a marvel, a true medical miracle. Pretty had given him
a hundred fifty large, but this thing—this
thing—was worth much, much more.
How had Scofield
come into that kind of money while sitting his tight buns in a hole full of
towelheads in the middle of the Sahara
Desert? How had he forged
the necessary connections to spring him from prison?
Just how powerful was Michael Scofield
anyway?
As he examined his
hand, he thought aloud: “Do I hate him anymore? Do I still hate you, Pretty?”
The man had spent
five years in a prison that made Fox River
look like a country club. Whatever connections he had made while in it came at
a huge, soul-crushing price. Sara married his enemy. Lincoln and LJ thought he
was dead. They were very close. Pretty had literally given his life to the
state in an effort to free his brother.
What brother would ever go that far for another? Not one in
a million. Not one in ten million.
“ ‘This is how we have come to know love: He
laid his life down for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers.’
”
He flexed his
metal fingers and turned the hand over, flexed them again.
Scofield, from that
scorching Saharan hole, or perhaps before he was thrown in it, found his boy
and enlisted his aid. They had become brothers themselves. Together they found
a way out.
“ ‘A friend loves at all times, and a
brother is born for adversity.’ ”
He closed his eyes.
He couldn’t help it whenever the image of his son lying in a pool of blood
invaded his mind again, which it did a hundred times a day.
His boy ...
They’d gotten
almost no time to get to know one another. Just a few fleeting days. The son he
never knew he had.
Scofield had spent five years
with him. Five years—in the same cell.
“Do I still hate
you, Pretty? Can I still hate you?”
In the past, and
given the same circumstances, unbelievable as they may have been, the answer
would’ve been simple and instant and given with bottomless jealous rage: Yes! Yes! YES!
But try as he
might—and Lord, how he had tried these past four months!—he could not dredge up
that blackness. The demon could not reach the candle to light it. And the
reason why was he himself: he would not allow it.
As much as he
didn’t want it to be true, as much as it galled him, as much as he wanted to hate Michael Scofield and wanted to make war upon him and wanted to take an eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth, he couldn’t! He
just couldn’t!
The truth was ... this amazing hand ... this fifty-million-dollar
gesture of repentance and reconciliation ... was nothing compared to the gift
of being with his son, even for the few days they were blessed to be together.
And Scofield was
responsible for giving him both.
“Do I still hate
you, Pretty?”
He chuckled sadly.
“Wrong question. Wrong question. Can
I still hate you?”
Scofield was, after
all, much more like him than he was willing to admit. That manila envelope
under his suite door at the Langham was proof. The deal it offered to him was
proof. The plan it outlined, long-term and brilliant, was proof. Ness’ gurgling, coughing, blue-faced death was proof.
Make no mistake: Michael
Scofield had his own demons, and his own candle in the window of his soul. That
much was abundantly clear now. Perhaps that was why, in the end, he had not
forgotten about him. Perhaps those demons and that candle was his, Teddy’s,
insurance policy at this point.
“Are you fightin’
it, Pretty?” he asked after standing and pacing, which he did probably
seventeen hours every single day between sets of push-ups and sit-ups and
jogging in place, and between moments of sitting on the bunk and writing short
stories, the papers of which were always confiscated by guards when he
finished. “Are you fightin’ your own Lucifer? He’s callin’ to you, Pretty. You
won and you got the lady doctor back, and your little boy, but I know you:
we’re more alike than you’re willin’ to admit. I did your biddin’, and I know
you want to let me rot. That’s the red-eyed demon, Pretty. Wouldn’t it be nice
to let him light that candle and you enjoy your little life ensconced in
suburbia knowin’ ol’ Teddy is turnin’ into a pile of bones in solitary
confinement in Fox River?”
He continued
pacing, his mind gradually emptying. An hour later a guard checked up on him
and fed him dinner (turning on the cell’s lights), and gave him his papers
back. He wrote some more, handed the papers back, and lay down. The lights went
out. Before he dropped off he murmured, as he always did, “Don’t let ol’
Lucifer light the candle, Scofield. I did you a solid—and lost my boy in the
doing. Don’t let that bastard win. Don’t.”
He woke to rapping on the cell door. Guards.
“Coming in,
Bagwell! Sit your ass on the bunk and put both hands on the mattress, palms up
and open, feet flat on the ground!”
He’d been through
this many times. Usually it was an inspection of the cell. They’d tear the
place up, push him around a little, and leave. He didn’t mind it so much, as it
broke up the deadly monotony and gave him something to do—clean and arrange the
cell.
“Sitting!” he
yelled back when he’d complied.
He heard the
electronic lock growl, then click. The door opened. The sounds of others in
solitary down the long hall could suddenly be heard.
Three guards
stepped in. Behind them was the warden. He held a manila envelope.
