After it was over, it being everything that happened in the aftermath of the second most magical kiss she’d ever experienced, second only in relation to the one that preceded it, she still couldn't be entirely sure how it all went down.

She knew that Dwight had intervened, his quick reactions preventing Roy from landing a single blow. It was lucky he had gotten back to his desk when he did. Perhaps it was that supersonic hearing he was always boasting about and he had heard the door open again. Or maybe he just was unimpressed with their kiss, not enough lip or noise for his taste, and stepped back from the scene and had been headed there already.  

Either way, it was a good thing he did and a better thing he was, as he constantly boasted, prepared for the worst, since she had not been. It was foolish of her not to consider that Roy might not give up so easily; might be more hurt or far angrier than she expected and could very possibly come upstairs to try to reason with her.

But she instead assumed he would never want to show any vulnerability in front of the Dunder Mifflin staff, and being she would have to come home eventually, he would just wait for her there.

How wrong she had been.

Knowing him as she did–and the raw shock he must have experienced having witnessing her locked in a kiss far more passionate that even the most fervent they had ever shared, with Jim no more than a few hours after she returned his ring, and combined with how hot-headed and violent he could become in the even the most innocuous of situations–the calamitous incident that followed could have been much worse than it turned out.

Still, just the thought that her impulsive decision and carelessness could have brought physical harm to Jim caused her a guilt that was hard to swallow. It took Jim's repeated promises that he would have gladly taken whatever punches Roy had intended to throw. That a blow from Roy, while not something he would enjoy and quite honestly a little scary to imagine, the pain of the unexpected hit–because he insisted, he could hold his own if he knew it was coming– would still be less hard on him than what his heart had to suffer for years watching them together. Compared to the agony he anticipated knowing when she ultimately married him, Roy's fist connecting with his face was a welcome substitute, a love tap he would happily endure as a means to end his years of standing by in silence.

As long as it meant they'd still have a chance, he'd bear the thump or even the all-out pummeling, although he assured her it would have never come to that, he may look like Gumby, but in a fight for her heart, his inner Hulk would emerge.   

It wasn't that way for Pam. She felt guilty enough for the emotional pain she dealt to each of them at one time or another, add physical pain and the guilt would be too much to feel she deserved her own happiness. She couldn't even bear to think of what she might have done had it come to that or what bearing Roy's attack would have on the romantic future she could have with Jim.

Thanks to Dwight, she would never have to.

She was also profoundly aware that in the middle of all the chaos, they, she and Michael, had arrived at the moment where their two timelines overlapped. What she couldn't be sure of was which one of her had stayed and which one had faded away since all the memories she now had were like one big confusing mess swirling around inside her head.

She knew she had been coming through the kitchen, trying to get to Jim before he left, having just decided she was never going back to Roy, because she at long last knew she was madly in love, only it was not with him.

She distinctly recalled running up behind Michael who had just burst through the second door, pressing on that silly bell and yelling something about the infamy of the day and how awesome it all was.

She remembered wanting to get past him to Jim, so she could tell him that the crush he once had on her wasn't single sided. And she knew, despite what he had said before, that it wasn't over yet, but neither was hers.

She was ready to tell him that she'd been in a cloud for years, her feelings blurred from invisible pressures that made her think she had to do what was expected instead of following her heart.  

They lingered on her tongue, words to express how something had changed the night on the boat. That ever since then she'd felt like a ghost had escaped from within her and was hovering about, willing her to look deep inside her soul. That same spirit seemed to have its own set of eyes and would come back to whisper to her all that the phantom vision could see from the different vantage point outside her body.

The feeling grew stronger every day and hit its peak the day of the seminar. It was all she could do to get to him to share how those murmurs got louder and louder until on that same day of their fight, when there were more voices telling her what to do than she could cognitively process, she blew up at the only one that wasn't speaking to her from within or wasn't the man that had stolen her voice years ago.

She could still feel how much she had wanted to make sure he knew how sorry she was, not only for lashing out, but for being a fool for so long, not seeing him, not seeing herself and not seeing what was between them was more than just friendship. That she hadn't known what it was because she'd never really known it before. But she knew now it was love.

All of those thoughts had only grown more vivid, settling deeper into her as she climbed those back stairs. It was like they became preserved by a photograph, the image of her feelings had burned onto her brain and stayed with her even now that that version of herself was somebody new, an amalgamation of two Pams who had separate existences over the last two weeks.

This new person, held all the memories of what she'd done for the last two weeks in both lives lived. She remembered every moment of her time at the Stewarts, but also how she'd spent the days following setting the date at home with Roy. She remembered the adventures with Michael during the day in the office with everyone, the day he burnt his foot and the concussion prevention seminar he held the next day, while also having the memory of the trip to the library, and the ice-skating rink and the nights they watched movies while waiting on Packer.

She remembered the trip to New York she got to experience with Gabby and the trip to the Poconos with Roy.  She remembered falling down the on the mountain when he left her alone, and the way Michael's pride in her talent lifted her up when she invited him over for lunch over so he wouldn't have to be.

They were all tied up to each other somehow and she wasn't sure which ones were real, until she took a moment to consider that both were and together they formed the new her.

The last thing she remembered was being on the other side of the kitchen, standing in the bullpen with Jim, seeing and hearing the reactions of their officemates as she lived out her other reality, the one where she had caught up to him, or rather he to her, but either way, the result had been the same, the confession of all she felt with the kiss that had been building since the night on the boat.

No, since the minute she met him.

In those last seconds before it happened, she recalled how Jim reacted in an instant as he heard Roy's voice and the feel of being pushed out of harm's way as her raging ex-fiancé came charging with clenched fists and testosterone-filled threats.

And then the room was filled with the pepper spray.

There was that split-second when she felt herself collide with her own other body. But only she knew she had ever been there. As the room blurred, everyone including both versions of herself began coughing and spitting and covering their burning eyes. The capsaicin cloud that was released into the air made every sight and sound a haze for anyone within a few feet of the aerosol discharge, which they all were.  

For one Pam, and she imagined it was the case for one of the Michaels too, the moment occurred in a slow motion, the blurred vision and whirring of lights, dizziness and nausea, wasn't just brought on by the spray but also by the trip back into oblivion by one of her two bodies.

But for the other it occurred with the super speed of a bullet train, just as must have for everyone else. One minute she was with Jim, then hurled away from him, and the next she was listening to Dwight instruct them all to head for the annex and to keep their eyes closed and hold their breath until they got there.

By the time they were all treated by the paramedics and questioned by the police and who arrived shortly after onto the scene, she was confident that no one had seen the two additional people who had also showed up just before the attack. And if they did, they would assume it was a hallucinogenic side effect of the toxins they inhaled.

The effects of the spray and its assault on all five senses, had a way of tamping down the earlier excitement the collective group had been expressing knowing that Jim and Pam were finally becoming a couple.

But not completely.

After the incident, they were no longer giddy about the kiss they witnessed, but were still supportive. In fact, seeing Roy's temper flare up gave them all reason to be relieved she was out of a relationship that had potential for her own harm at his hand one day. And even if Roy's violence would never be directed at her, it still was evident to all he was still wrong for her.

And she had at last opened her eyes to the person who was right. The person, who, though his own red eyes still teared and burned, never once left hers as they were interviewed not by the members of the doc crew but the police.

Even Angela, who's earlier scowl had been wiped away by the effects of the pepper spray, came around. When she came back to the group after her questioning, even the snark was gone from her tone and only the glaze of the saline remained in her eyes, mingled with an almost lustful look whenever she looked over at Dwight, her hero. As she turned back to Pam, gone was the animosity and evident in her voice was retrospective sympathy and acceptance.

"I guess you dodged a bullet getting out of that relationship while you still could…"

But even a compassionate Angela couldn't help but pass a little judgment,

"…but you might have waited a little longer than half a day after ending things with Roy to choose to be with him," she eyed Jim who stood protectively by Pam's side.

"and Dwight wouldn't have had to save you and the rest of us would be spared all this..."

She waved her hand in a circle above her head before her eyes became gentle once more.

"…but I suppose Jim is a much better match for you."

As she walked away from them, Pam could swear she heard her whisper to herself about how it was in seeing her man, the clearly superior being, be a hero that made her tolerate being a party to any of this.

Pam knew it wasn't the only bullet she dodged that day.

That nobody saw the other Pam and Michael show up only to then fade away was nothing short of a miracle.

Even the film crew, when asked by the police to see footage of the incident, both Randall and Matt thankfully reported they hadn't been on the scene when it happened. Both seemed genuinely surprised the other wasn’t there.

Pam knew only one of them truly was. The other, she’d learned was as good an actor as he was a cameraman.