“Good god, woman, would you get a grip?”

Pam stood in front of the bathroom mirror, a bottle of foundation in her casted hand and a sponge applicator in her shaking left as she attempted to cover the still green-and-yellowing splotches on her face and neck. It wasn’t so much the thought of seeing Jim that had her clammy and shaking. No. Jim had been nothing but above and beyond kind when it came to the way she looked post-accident. But the anticipation of facing her coworkers, people she truly didn’t know, hadn’t spent weeks forming new bonds with, made her incredibly apprehensive.

She was beginning to rethink this whole paying the office a visit thing altogether.

But then, Jim was knocking on the door, and her makeup was only halfway finished in a shoddy attempt with her nondominant hand, and she wasn’t even dressed yet. This was going to be a disaster.

She let him in with a curt, “Hi, I’ll...I’m not ready yet. Just, give me ten minutes, okay?” before turning briskly and closing her bedroom door behind her.

Jim waited awkwardly in the front entryway, debating if he should take off his shoes and go after her, or stay put. When he heard a stifled clattering sound, he went with the former, toeing off his shiny work shoes and making his way swiftly toward the noise.

He found her in a new outfit, jean capris and a plain v-neck, standing in the bathroom, where the contents of her makeup bag lay scattered on the tile.

“Shit,” she whispered, her head dropping before she crouched towards the spill.

“Here, wait, let me help,” he offered, his voice steady and calm as he lay a hand on hers, squeezing it reassuringly before gathering the tubes and containers. When everything was back on the counter, he stopped to take in the dejectedness of her drooping shoulders and outward pouting lip.

Placing his first two fingers beneath her chin, he lifted her gaze to meet his.

“Hey. What’s going on?”

She huffed, her shoulders lifting and sagging as tears started to pool in her eyes.

“I...I just...I’m a righty, and I can’t even do my makeup, Jim. And these people...what if they…”

Her eyes screamed God, please help, and no sooner was he closing the lid to the toilet to sit down than he had her hands in his, her face cradled in his large palm, his thumb wiping her tears away.

“Hey. Look at me. Please?” It took several moments of sniffing, but when she finally did, he continued. “I know that this is scary, and weird, okay? But, Pam? These people, they love you. They’re pulling for you and praying for you...they just want you to get better. They don’t care about all of this.”

He ran his fingers gingerly over the remaining bruises, the thinning line across her forehead.

Still, her lip pouted in a sadness that reminded him of a small child, shy and afraid.

“You’re beautiful, Pam. But, if it will make you feel better to have a little bit of this on,” he continued, picking up a bottle of what he hoped was somewhere in the same ballpark as foundation, “then let me help.”

It took a moment, but when she nodded slowly, he returned a small smile and helped her sit on top of the counter. She smiled shyly as she gave him a different bottle and a sponge and helped him pour a small amount onto it before he began.

She didn’t really wear makeup in the first place, he had come to realize in all his years of knowing her. There was the occasional eye shadow pop of color if they went out somewhere nice, and he knew she wore mascara everyday. But she was never the type to spend hours in front of the mirror painting herself into someone she wasn’t. With that knowledge in mind and a sponge in hand, he did his best to make her as Pam as possible.

He used even, gentle strokes, spreading the cool liquid over her face, marvelling at the way that her skin was going from a rainbow palate to one gentle tone. It wasn’t his Pam. Truly, he preferred the colors, the healing and the scars. But she needed this security blanket. And for that, he kept on painting.

After ever stroke, he was asking Does this hurt? and Is this okay? and she was only nodding that he was okay to keep pressing on.

In the end, he needed a little bit more of the tannish liquid to cover every ounce of green and yellow, and it took a few tries to make sure that everything looked smooth and even and blended together. Between them, she was the artist, after all.

When he whispered Okay, all done, she slid off the counter and turned to look, slowly dragging her eyes from the sink up to the mirror. She gasped quietly at the sight of herself, her lips parted just slightly as she brought the fingers of her left hand to her chin, her nose, her cheek. She blinked back the tears, mumbling something about Crap, I don’t want to ruin your handy work as she brushed them gingerly away before he turned her around.

“You okay?” he asked her again, still a little heartsick that she was covered behind a layer of falsity.

“I...you just...you did a really good job. I’m...me again.”

She wasn’t though, and he knew that, but her tears were happy ones, and her smile was genuine, and that was the only reason that he was standing on his two feet, the tips of his fingers caked in foundation.

The car ride to Dunder Mifflin was quiet, as Pam stewed in her own thoughts, and Jim did his best to obey the traffic laws. They sat in the parking lot for quite some time, as Pam took in her surroundings.

“Do you remember this at all?”

“I remember having my interview here, for sure,” she began. “And I remember...well...Roy worked here before I did so…”

She ducked her head as she trailed off.

He nodded once, curtly, and gripped the wheel before turning to face her.

“You ready for this?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she offered, her smile and her eyes nervous behind the thin layer of makeup.

He opened her door and offered her a hand, which she accepted greatly, squeezing onto him for dear life as they walked inside and rode up the elevator.

It was eerie to Jim, the way that everyone had actually listened for once.

He had called a meeting bright and early, explaining that Pam would be coming in for a visit, and made a list of strict do’s and don’ts. Arriving to an environment where the lights were dimmed and everyone stayed back at their desks in apprehensive quietude like he’d asked? Well, to say he was warmed with appreciation would be putting it lightly.

“Hey guys,” he began, his voice quiet and a little shaky, which he wasn’t expecting. “Umm, so Pam is kind of nervous about seeing everyone. I figure I’ll kind of show her around and let her come to you as she sees fit. I know everyone wants to say hello, but just bare with us, okay?”

A collective nod around the room eased the tension, and with that, he set about showing her the lay of the land, starting with her desk.

It all passed by her in hazy flashes, the edges fuzzy both from all of the overwhelming stimuli and the nerves that were pumping loudly in her ears.

“I have a picture of you at my desk?”

“Yup.”

“And you sit right there?”

“I do.”

“God, I must have it pretty bad for you or something.”

“Yeah...or something.”

He shook his head, doing his best to hide the grin.

“Why do you have a yogurt lid wrapped around your lamp?”

“Pam. This is not just a yogurt lid. This is a medal.”

“A medal?”

“Absolutely. I won bronze overall, which, given the circumstances, I’m pretty proud of.”

“So, this is the kitchen.”

“This I actually remember. I ate up here with Roy a couple times when he first started...hey, Jim?”

“Yeah?”

“Is there any reason Michael is, uhm, peeking through the blinds at us from his office?”

“Trust me when I say this, but he's being tame.”

She didn’t dare tell him, not yet, anyway, but the shock of the environment had her head swirling with tons of oddities. Many of them, sadly, were facts about paper. Carbon bonds and weights and types of copier paper and their prices. But then there were little things.

Angela had a cat with diabetes.

Dwight owned a beet farm.

Stanley had a daughter.

Meredith had a drinking problem.

Trivial information, really.

But it was if she was standing in a space that was dull and muted, and stepping into the vicinities of these people shocked her into knowledge that added bouts of color with every footstep into this quasi-new territory.

Michael’s face was truly the only one with a real sense of familiarity, if only because her interview had been before the accident. The rest of these faces blurred together on flash cards and in video diaries that, while she more than appreciated, didn’t do justice to just who they were in her own formed opinions over the years.

Three years.

A lot could happen in three years in your own workplace.

Who had she developed close bonds with? Were there people she avoided? People she went to for advice or respite or just a five minute break?

Was she, god forbid, enemies with anyone in this building? It certainly didn’t appear so, by the way bright eyes kept following her every move like she was a shiny toy that they all wanted to get their hands on. Really, it was like her first day in the hospital all over again, that feeling of being a zoo animal itching at the back of her thoughts as she paraded around the once familiar place.

It was a little odd, she realized, when things would click, like the location of extra paper clips, or what mug in the drying rack she was partial to, or that if you wanted to make a regular copy, you had to press the START button three times quickly or it wouldn’t work. They really did need a new copy machine.

They were back at her desk, with only a few quick Hello’s being said, when Jim pulled back her rolling chair and offered her a seat. Unbeknownst to her, Ronnie had been banished for the day right after Jim made the announcement that Pam was coming to visit.

Michael had been rudely insistent. Jim had flagged Ronnie down in the stairwell to apologize.

“Your throne, m’lady.”

As she sank into the chair, there was another odd familiarity. Of course, someone else had been sitting here while she was away. But her bearings rocked to a standstill, like a ship mooring at the dock.

She had already seen the framed photo of Jim, and the ones tacked to the cork board wall were all photos taken before the accident, of family members and friends alike.

There was a Post-It anchored to the lip of the desk with her TV schedule on it. Parts of it made sense, but when had she become a fan of Big Brother?

Instead of staying behind the desk, Jim rounded to the front, leaning on clasped hands as he cocked his head to the ceiling, rolling his eyes back in this sort of cute, pondering way that somehow made her relax. He was giving her time, letting her adjust and get reacquainted to everything before he stepped in.

So she took her time, glancing to ever desk from her perch at the front. She couldn’t see accounting past the floral arrangements to her right, but Phyllis and Stanley were just beyond the front desk pod where she knew Jim and Dwight sat. She wondered, idly, how she got any work done with him being so close.

When the phone rang, a collective intake of breath around the room had her snapped from her daze as she realized that all eyes were on her. Jim’s, staring down at her, were wide and a little nervous.

“You don’t have to get that,” he whispered, his hand jumping past the desk towards it.

But unexplainably, her body was moving of her own accord.

“No, it’s okay. Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam.”

She watched on as Jim bit his lip.

“Mhm. Sure, let me just transfer you to Michael Scott.”

“It’s--”

“I know. 2100.”

She grinned at him nervously as her fingers hit TRANSF-2100-TRANSF, and the phone in the office across the way lit up.

There were definite tears in his eyes when he smiled back at her.

When Michael’s phone clicked off several minutes later, he stepped out of the office with his own glassy eyes, speaking through facial expressions to Jim.

“Do you, uh...do you wanna go talk with Michael for a sec?”

She nodded and followed Jim to Michael’s office where the door closed behind them with a soft click.

It was kind of cute, the way that her boss was standing next to his desk with the shy grin of a five year old plastered from ear to ear. His eyes shifted several times between Jim and Pam before she realized what he was wanting and waiting for. When she nodded, first to Jim, and then to Michael, she stepped forward, letting the shorter of the two men embrace her.

Something about him felt fatherly, like a protector. But there were other parts about his hug that felt like friend and confidant.

When he whispered Welcome home, kiddo, she closed her eyes and smiled.

They spent a decent amount of time getting past How are you feeling?’s before Jim noticed her squinting at the bright lights coming in through Michael’s window.

“Hey, man, I think we’re going to take off. I’ll be back after I drop Pam at home.”

“Don’t worry about it, big guy. Just make sure she gets home safe. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

She started to apologize to everyone for not staying longer, but was cut off by several waves and Take care of yourself’s and We’re glad to see you up and about’s. They were heading towards the door when Roy, a dollar bill in hand, came pushing through it instead.

The zoo feeling came back, but now with all jaws dropped and wide eyes were on him, Pam still didn’t feel much less nauseated by the whole ordeal.

But then again, this was Roy. Only a few weeks ago, she had woken up screaming for him, giddy about his proposal and anxious to start their life together. He had definitely been in the wrong on several accounts, but her heart still softened for him, especially in this wake of nerves that was clearly crawling all over his face.

“Uh, hey, everyone. Just, uh...just up here to grab a soda.”

He spoke to the room, but his eyes lingered solely on Pam, his smile awkward as he bit his lip, not quite knowing what to say or what to do.

But when she turned to peer up at Jim, her eyes told her every intention, and he back up slowly as she cocked her head at Roy and followed him into the break room.

When the door closed with a solid thud, Roy exhaled, slowly and methodically inserting his dollar bill into the machine as he spoke more to it than to Pam herself.

“So...comin’ in for a little tour, huh?”

“Yeah, that...that was kind of the plan.”

His can clunked down the tubes of the machine, and he reached his meaty hand into the slot to retrieve it, fiddling aimlessly with the tab without ever opening it.

“How are you doing? I mean, with everything. You’re home now, right?” he asked the top of his Dr. Thunder.

“I’m home now. Well, home as in my parent’s place. I’m still on concussion protocol so...round the clock babysitter it is.”

She chuckled awkwardly as he muttered That’s good, that’s good, not quite knowing what to say until--

“At least those damn cameras aren’t back for the new season yet. I can’t imagine coming back for your first day to be filmed.”

When she cocked her eyebrow in genuine ignorance, he backtracked.

“Oh, right. You, uh...yeah, Pammy, they kind of turned your office into a documentary. There’s cameras in here filming from like, September to May every year.”

“That’s…”

And it was all she could say, because that was more information than she cared to process.

“But, anyway, how’s the head? Are you remembering more at all?”

His eyes, that blue that she had been lost in for so many years, were so genuine, and she let herself get lost in the familiarity that he brought her in this strange place. They had shared lunch in this very room once, after all. Probably more than that, she pondered.

“Uhm, it’s slow going, to be honest. I uh...I remembered everything that happened with Melissa,” she offered with a cock of her eyebrow.

She wasn’t telling him to be spiteful, and he exhaled with a shrug that she cut off before he could apologize.

“Walking around here is a little weird. I’m getting these little flashes of everything, but it’s not like someone just popped a DVD into my head of a loop of office memories or something. Angela has a lot of cats.”

She shrugged, and Roy laughed heartily, finally popping his soda as he took a long swig.

But then, she watched as his face fell from laughter to confusion to deep thought to a light bulb popping behind his eyes.

“Is...everything…?”

He shook his head, grinning widely before mumbling something about I’ve gotta get back to work and I’m glad to see you doing better before he was bounding out the door and down the stairs, his can of soda still almost full on the round table.

They were on the road again before she finally said, “That was weird,” and Jim chuckled, nodding in agreement.

He had plans to help his dad that afternoon, he said, or he would have gladly offered to keep her company.

But she dismissed him with a hug, with an You’ve done so much for me today, and Go see your family, and Don’t staple-gun any of your fingers together before he was out the door again.

Mom and dad found her on the couch that evening with her arms wrapped around bent knees. She told them all about going into work with Jim for a couple of hours, and after Helene’s initial outburst of scolding, settled into a comfortable conversation about the memories that were starting to trickle back in.

It was in the middle of dinner that the doorbell interrupted Will’s monologue drone about something one of his foremen had done that day to piss him off, and Pam was all too grateful to leave the discussion to answer it.

“Roy?”

“Uh, hey, hi Pam. Is this a bad time?”

She was still shocked back to her high school days when her mother called from the kitchen to see who was at the door.

“It’s...it’s just Roy, mom,” she called over her shoulder, her eyes still on his stocky frame as he palmed what appeared to be a DVD case back and forth in his large hands. “Do you want to come in?”

He nodded with a shy confidence as he stepped over the threshold and out of his work boots, which was odd, because he never used to actually take his shoes off when they were dating. Will had yelled more times than he cared to count for Roy to Take your goddamn feet off my coffee table!

He angled his body to wave through the doorway to the kitchen with a warm, “Hi Mr. B. Mrs. B. Good to see you,” before following Pam to the living room, sitting nervously on the couch.

It was so weird to see him like this, on her parent’s living room couch like they were teenagers again.

His posture was the same, with his legs spread so wide that his bulky frame took up two-thirds of the cushions and pushed her into one corner. He looked young for a moment in time, the way that his knees bounced and his hands were jittery, just like that first night that she invited him over for more than studying, and he had kissed her in the middle of Dirty Dancing. His eyes showed the same bright timidness when she finally asked, “So, what are you doing here?”

He handed her the DVD case gingerly as if it could break with the slightest wrong touch.

“I...just...listen, I know this might not bring everything back, but...I can’t believe Halpert didn’t say anything about this.”

She scrunched her eyebrows as she turned the black, blank case over in her hands.

“I don’t….what is this?”

“I called the camera crew up and asked them to put this together for me. For you,” he corrected himself. “Hopefully it’ll fill in a little of what you missed.”

He extended his hand, taking the case to pop the disc in the DVD player. When he pressed PLAY, she was thrust into a whirlwind of emotions.

It was her.

Her life.

Literally playing out before her on a television screen.

She looked so young, but then again, it was so much of what she was used to, not this face with more defined lines that she kept catching in the mirror.

There were her quirky coworkers, all so young looking, too, different from who she had seen earlier this afternoon.

She looked bored behind her desk, but then Michael would do something stupid, and the cameras would catch her rolling her eyes before panning across the room to Jim.

And there it was.

That look of pure adoration on the face of a slightly younger, slightly more unkempt version of him.

He made faces, stole jelly beans. He was everywhere.

She was falling asleep on his shoulder, and the way that he smiled down at her made it seem like she lit the switch on the nighttime stars.

The same look was there in everything that he did that involved her.

Whether she was perched on the edge of his desk laughing at some joke that the cameras didn’t catch, or passing an air five between their work spaces.

It was there in the unseen moments, too. The cameras caught him looking at her when she wasn’t aware, that little quirk of a smile so different, so private and much more intimate than when he faced her head on.

They were ice skating, and she was reaching out for him and laughing and clutching his hands for dear life.

In the aisles of a grocery store, fun times pegged with awkward silences where both of their eyes were wandering, and she wanted so much to know what was going on in that Pam’s head even though it was written all over her face.

They were standing in a parking lot, laughing at Dwight, and when a redhead showed up and they were clearly together, she saw the jealousy in her own eyes, the spitefulness in the way she reached for Roy. For a moment, she was was ashamed.

She was on his bed, her head thrown back in laughter at a yearbook spread wide open, despite his protests. What she hadn’t caught in those moments of perusing the pages, was the way that he watched her, so somberly, so lovingly, but then caught himself, turned away, pushed it all down when it was so, so clear what his feelings were.

It was there in the little interviews that the camera pulled him in for. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t hear their questions. There was more in his eyes, more in the way he stumbled over what to say, than the answers he gave.

It was in that little teal teapot, full of memories she was willing herself to remember, because that Pam was so overjoyed, so clearly astounded and grateful over a packet of hot sauce and a mini-golf pencil that she was dying to climb inside the television and find out why.

She saw the way that Roy treated her, and it broke her heart for a moment, to see so much love go down the drain just like that.

But then they were on the boat, the same boat that had knocked her to the ground back in the hospital. He hadn’t said it, but it was there. In his eyes. Tattooed into the creases of his forehead. Stuck on his tongue. Filling the spaces of almost thirty seconds of silence. It was there.

And then it was really, really there.

I’m in love with you in the darkness of the parking lot. Tears dripping off his nose faster than he could brush them away. Kisses against his desk. Her stupid, stupid self pushing him away.

It was all there.

But she could barely see it through the flood of tears that had started the moment the Pam on screen had fallen asleep on his shoulder.

Roy had only peeked over to see her reaction once. It was during a scene when the on-screen Roy was saying something crude around the lunch table. There was no use in trying to hide his own transgressions now that so much was out in the open. He figured this would help her out. But when the screen turned blue and popped back to the menu, he was scared to see her face turning purple and her breathing rapid and shallow. It brought him back to that day in the hospital when they’d had to sedate her.

“Oh my god, Pam, I--”

“I...need…”

He was crashing to his knees on the floor in front of her, his hands on her cheek, over top of the one she had clenching her chest. Her sobs were pitchy, barely distinct noises at all.

“Mrs. B! Mr. B!”

But she was shaking her head quickly from side to side, barely able to get the No past her shaky lips.

“Roy. Can you...take me to him? Please?”

“Pammy, listen, I think we need to get you--”

“No. I need…”

And he understood.

Mrs. B gave her a brown paper bag and tried her best to keep Pam inside to calm down first, but it was evident to everyone in that room that she wouldn’t stop until she made it to him.

He had to help her into the truck, had to buckle her inside.

Had to remind her to breathe.

It was dumb luck that he still had Halpert’s number in his phone, and he did his best not to freak him out with a phone call that was mostly, “Listen, man, I need your address. Pam wants to see you. Yeah, like now.”

He was at his parent’s place on the other end of town near the quarry, but he would leave right away, Halpert was saying. They’d probably beat him there. Was everything okay? Why was Roy calling?”

“Halpert, just...she’s...she needs you right now. I’ll explain everything when you get here.”

He pulled into the driveway, not quite knowing what to do. Pam was breathing next to the paper bag, crushing it in her hands as tears continued to stream. He wanted to reach out and comfort her, make sure she was okay, say something, but then it was kind of evident that he shouldn’t. She was so far gone in her own head right now that he wasn’t even sure she’d hear him if he did say something.

When Halpert pulled up behind them, he was out of the car without shutting it off, her name on his lips along with Is everything--

But she was crashing into him before he even had a chance to finish his sentence.

It was weird, because the entire time she’d been crying, Roy hadn’t really heard a thing. It was whispy and breathy, but she wasn’t crying. As soon as she propelled herself into his chest, damn near knocking him over in the process, she let it wail.

Halpert’s arms were tight around her, and Roy could see from where he was standing that she was going to leave bruises in his back from where she was holding on.

Halpert gave him a wide eyed stare over Pam’s head, and passed him a look, mouthed She’s fine, I promise. She needs you. Just be here for her, okay? before the other man nodded, hesitantly, and held onto Pam tighter.

Roy backed away then, slowly, doing his best not to disturb the moment. He closed the door to the truck with a soft thud, gave them one more sad smile, and drove away.