The haze that filled the bullpen did not take long to lift.

Within thirty minutes the vapors from Dwight’s blast of pepper spray cleared out from the heart of the Dunder Mifflin office space.

The haze that she’d been in was a different story.

That had taken way too long to flush out from inside of her.

Years too long, she knew that now, but as the capsaicin fog briefly filled the room, the figurative smog that had been keeping her from seeing clearly in her life all but evaporated with the final event that ended with Roy single, unemployed and in court-mandated anger management.

However, leaving her cloudy past behind her left her with much to do. Lucky for her she had the extra week of vacation which at her own suggestion, Michael had granted her. She couldn’t help but think what other applications her new-found power of persuasion with him might have. But that, she knew she’d have to come back to at a later time. The most recent list she’d compiled as a means to make the many things she had to do feel a little less overwhelming didn’t have the space to add anything else. Her idea to create herself a new job complete with pay increase would have to wait until she had a few of the items crossed off.

In the meantime, she had more than just a list to make the tasks at hand seem less daunting. She had Jim. Together, they put her time off to good use for car shopping and apartment hunting as he gave up a few of his own personal days to help.

It took a bit of time to find a decent place in her budget, but she was lucky to have a gracious host in her friend Isabel, who took her in while she searched.

Jim of course, had offered up his bedroom, insisting he was happy to sleep on the sofa in the den for as long as it took for her to find an affordable rental, but Pam knew that would never happen. Not only was his couch about a foot too small to comfortably accommodate his size, and she would never kick him out of his own bed, but with all that had been building between them for so long, there was no way they wouldn't be sleeping together on the very first night if she took him up on the offer. And once there, who was to know if she would ever leave. That was not how she wanted her new life to begin, being dependent on anyone else but herself, even if that person was Jim.

Jim, in contrast to Roy, seemed only to want her to keep growing and find more of what she could be. Still, Pam knew without the chance to discover her own independence and strength by standing on her own two feet, in her own apartment, driving her own car, and making her own way, she risked falling into the same rut she had been in with him, no matter how different Jim was from her ex.

So, it became Isabel's living room she called home until the right place came along. But Pam had been exactly right in predicting how fast thing would progress. It was after they had their first kiss in his bedroom, in the very spot where last she had willed herself to believe they shared nothing more than a playful friendship, that she found herself staring into eyes, the color of emerald enticement. Contrast to the words he spoke, that said he would wait for as long as she needed to, those eyes, simultaneously suppliant and patient, uncomplaining yet hungry, made it impossible for her to hold back what she wanted just as much as him.

After the magical night it happened, a mere three days after her time travel ended, she became a frequent guest at her new boyfriend's house.

It was on the way back to his place after work one night, when they saw the for-rent sign. Two blocks from his place, she was somewhat apprehensive to suggest checking it, it being so close to him and their relationship so new, but before she even had time to debate it internally, he was pulling out his phone to call for an appointment when they could see it.

It was hard to say who was more excited when two days later, she signed the lease.

Unpacking took more time. On the nights she spent in her new home, she was too easily distracted by her own frequent guest as they christened the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and even the small closet.  

Boxes sat unopened as sometimes simply his questions and the engaging conversations they led to kept her from wanting to do anything more than lay in his arms and share stories with him.

Eventually, their contents were emptied into her new space. It was in the second to last one to be unpacked, that she found the missing sketchbook, the one she had during her stay at Randall's place. There tucked inside the middle, she recovered what she'd been looking for ever since her new life settled down a bit. The Sleeping Eros drawing was even more striking than she had remembered it. Proud then, as she looked now, she was ashamed she had ever let anyone make her doubt the talent she possessed. It was just a simple sketch, but it was beautiful. It was art.

As attached as she now found herself to the piece, as much for its beauty as the way it served to remind her of the magical journey she had taken, it had been created as a gift. Had it not been for the misplaced excitement over meaningless earrings, which at the time clouded her thoughts of anything else, it would already be in the hands of its recipient.

She couldn’t wait to give it to Gabby, who she just knew would love it.

With all she'd been busy with in the weeks since she was their guest, she still hadn't had time to find another gift for her, but she bought the Scotch for Randall and now that she had the sketch, and a place she could invite them too, she wanted to have them over to dinner so Gabby could meet Jim and vice versa.

She hadn't meant to let so much time go by and had been feeling a little guilty for it, more so when later she learned why the doc crew were not there when she returned after her days off.

It seems Dunder Mifflin management and their corporate legal department, after investigating the incident that occurred, became concerned of what other problematic or incriminating situations might be uncovered at the Scranton branch. With Michael Scott at the helm, they had to wonder why they had not considered before what a hornet’s nest of trouble they could be in as it was all caught on camera.

Production was halted for almost two weeks while they mulled over the decision.

Ultimately, they allowed the show to go on, but when the crew returned, Pam was sure she noticed a difference in Randall and she was sure it had to do with the fact that she had almost been the reason it didn't.

It wasn't that he wasn't friendly anymore. He still was, but not like he had been when she spent the week at his house. His pleasantness towards her was no different from his demeanor with Oscar or Phyllis or Toby, back to the way it was with before she’d come to know so much about him and his wife.

A few times she got the sense he wanted to chat with her about what happened when he made the few passing remarks asking if she was glad to be back and suggested she not take any other trips for a while. She knew just what he meant and suspected there might even be a bit of hostility behind the cheerful joke, not because of his tone which she could honestly say held no resentment, but more from her own guilt.

It was her actions that had almost been the cause of his show's abrupt termination. Not only that, but she still hadn't made any gesture to repay his and his wife's kindness while she had been lost in a time wormhole.

Short of using the Time Turner again, if it would even work, there was nothing she could do about the former. Quite surely any attempt at that would create more trouble than it might fix. Plus, as much as she felt she owed to Randall, she wasn’t about to mess with what she had now. She was done with time travel. From now on she planned to take her vacations only in the current space-time continuum.

But she decided it was way past time to rectify the later, so after her talking head one afternoon, she pulled him aside.

"I've been so busy the last few weeks but I haven't forgotten all you did during my…" she looked around for Brian and seeing he'd drawn back the boom and set it down before he left them alone in the room, she went on but with a lowered head and voice… "travels. I can't begin to thank you enough for all you did."

Randall smiled warmly back at her and a hint of the electric twinkle came to his eyes, putting her more at ease but also firing up her nose with an emotional heat that she knew would soon fill her eyes with a sparkle of welling tears.

"Oh, it was nothing, a granola bar and a bit of advice. Hardly much to thank me for and certainly not enough to cause the reaction you seem to be having, although I would assume it has something more to do with your time travel and how that turned out for you."

His jeweled eye flashed a wink at her, his thin lips curling upwards from under his white mustache.

"We both know it was much more than that. And I've been wanting to repay you by having you and Gabby over for dinner, but you know first I had to find a place to have you over to."

Pam noticed instantly the strange look that came over his face, utter confusion expressed through the slits his eyes became as his brow wrinkled with his puzzlement.  

“What are you talking about Pam? Who’s Gabby?”

“Your wife.”

“My wife? I’m not married. Never been.”

“Are you playing with me? Did Jim put you up to this? He did, didn't he? Wow, it's a good one I'll give him that.”

Her cheeks puffed as she waited for him to return the smile, yet aware he was well-trained at staying unresponsive through even the most outrageous things he’d witnessed here at their office. When the vertical crease between his brows didn’t move, she went on.

“Okay, but really, I bought you your favorite bottle of Scotch and I have a drawing I made for Gabby and now that I have finally have my plates and silverware unpacked…"

Now, he looked at her alarmingly, as if wondering how to react to someone who had suddenly gone mad in his presence.

"Pam, this isn't a Jim prank. I really don't know what you are talking about."

Whipping her head to face the bullpen, she was sure she'd see a smirking Jim, but his back was to her. Turning back to Randall, she searched his for the breach that would assure her that it was in fact her new boyfriend behind the gag but found only an expression of mingled sympathy and confusion.

Pam slapped her hand to her neck, despite knowing there was nothing it would do to stop crack her voice as she went on.

“You have to. I stayed at the Village Park apartment with you and Gabby for a week. Michael too for a few days until he got kicked out for eating on the white couch and then erasing your TiVo shows, and one more thing I can’t remember now. I slept in the office on the pull-out since the third bedroom was stuffed with the extra stuff from your New York house.”

Even as she spoke, she came to realize this wasn't a joke planned by Jim. Although he said he believed every bit of what she shared of her journey, she was aware he still had his moments of skepticism, that accepting it went against everything he once held true. Whether he was still convinced or not, he made her promise to never speak of it to again to anyone else, using Dwight as the example of what others would think of her if she did.  She agreed, knowing he had a very valid point.

“Pam, I can assure you I have never had a wife named Gabby, never had a wife period. I live in an old house in Scranton where I have been for years. I never had a house in New York, just a small apartment I shared with a roommate. I would never in a million years be insane enough to have a white couch, since I eat all my meals off the coffee table in front of my dark gray one. I’m not sure where you stayed or what happened to you or where you even went after I left you on the deck of the boat but it wasn’t my place and I sure as hell would not allow Michael anywhere near it or my TiVO.”

What he was saying sounded a lot more logical than what she remembered of the week, a week that upon reflection had seemed tailored to everything she'd desired, from the trip to the Met, right down to the last meal that she still wondered how Gabby knew was her favorite.

But in her heart of hearts, she believed it was real, even if it wasn't for Randall.

Eyes watering again, she staggered backward and fell into the chair.

Randall set down the camera and rushed to where she sat, white as a ghost, his own face featuring a shade almost as pale.  He stood at her side waiting for color to return to hers.

"I guess I must have dreamt that part, or who knows maybe this is all a dream.”

To that Randall smiled but there was a difference in the way his features portrayed it, as if the slight curl of his lips caused a pain that erased all the earlier twinkle from out of his eyes.

“Dreams can seem very real sometimes. And the more real they seem, the harder they can be to let go once they’re over.”

“I guess,” Pam replied as she stood up, still wobbly but steady enough to make it back to her desk.

Randall said one last thing as she started for the door.

“Pam, I'm sure you've been through a lot, with the time travel and all but I think you are in a good place now. Don’t dwell on the past. Go out and enjoy your future.”

---

Pam left, leaving Randall alone in the room, more than a little spooked by the conversation he just had.

She was going to be the last talking head, called in to discuss her latest sale to the patron who was a huge fan of the more avant-garde pieces.

After a minute more, he decided to call in Dwight. It had been for the most part an uneventful few days at Dunder Mifflin, but he could always count on Dwight for a good laugh even with nothing going on. And he needed a laugh after Pam brought up a name from his past he hadn’t thought of in years. Gabby, the one that got away. The woman he loved forever, but never worked up the courage to tell.

---

Pam sat her desk unable to make sense of the information she just received.

It seemed impossible that Gabby didn't exist, she felt so real.

The drawing she held in her hands most definitively was.

No wonder Randall's demeanor towards her had taken a turn back to the formal—because she hadn’t spent a long week becoming closely acquainted with him and his non-existent, as she just learned, wife. He knew she was back from a trip through time but it seemed their last interaction in that dimension was on the boat the day it happened.

There was no white couch, no deep conversations over home-cooked meals, no theories about how things would always happen as they were meant to, and no trip to New York and the Met.

She looked down at the sleeping cherub she drew, the one the spirit in her dream had admired so on their imaginary trip to the museum.

Was it a dream? Or something else? Was her the perspective of everything she went through different from the inside of it. Had Gabby been a hallucination to escort her around the alternate timeline, her own spiritual angel steering her through what would otherwise be a harrowing experience? Whomever or whatever force had dominion of the realm, knew enough to send someone other than Michael to be her tour guide.

Michael, he'd been there too, that much she knew. They spoke little about anything they'd been through since coming back. Again, Jim made her see how it was best they didn't. Pam had gotten quite good at steering Michael’s conversations away from any mention of it. In the last week he had even stopped trying to bring it up with her.

She looked up into Michael’s office now and noticed the way his upper body swayed ever so slightly side to side, now aware of what that motion was, him running his feet along the worn-out area of his old familiar carpet.

They had gone back in time that was for certain.  

But what they did and where they stayed was now a mystery.

From her locked bottom drawer, she pulled out the manifesto she’d written herself in the final days. The one meant to lock in her actions by explaining to herself that time travel was possible. That though she might not remember any of it, she had done it and while in the past made some needed changes to her life. Changes she hoped that if she forgot making them, she could read the account of her journey and understand just what had led to them. In the end she hadn’t needed to revisit it, Upon her return, she remembered every moment from the three intersecting timelines that merged into one.

But now she felt compelled to see if what she wrote had changed. Perhaps a fourth timeline existed. Maybe, another version of herself was still in the past making more changes she hoped would not destroy what she created for herself in her now.

Letting out a breath of relief as she skimmed the pages, the account she read was the same she knew to be true. Not a word of it was different from what was in her memory. All the secret clues that only she and very few others would know were still sprinkled in there too.  It was only when she got to the part about the dream of a terrace with flowers that she felt something was wrong.

It still was true. She still held the memory of having that dream. But she also still hadn’t told anyone about it. Not even Jim. They hadn’t had a chance to grab the pages before the big shift. They’d been held up by that incredible kiss. But before they left the office after that long night, she found them and set them inside the drawer that locked.

Everything but that passage, she had told him in the days that followed or he had previously known. It was only that secret dream, she held back. Reading it again now, she knew why.

That thing about the terrace. It was a nice dream to have as a twelve-year-old. It was something she read in this book and she just loved. So much that it kind of stuck with her. What was so disheartening, was that between then and now, no bigger dream, no more monumental desire had surpassed or even joined it. She was almost ashamed of how, aside from marrying Roy, that was the biggest thing she had ever wanted.

But in her new life, because of what she learned and did through her time travel, she had so many other dreams that she had been sharing with Jim and every one he assured her that she could achieve.

Setting the papers back in the drawer, she decided she would tell him this one tonight. Simple as it was, as one of many things she one day hoped, no planned to have, she could accept it was something she still wanted.

It should have been enough, that the pages matched her memory, that she was already miles from where she’d been only weeks before, but still there was a gnawing inside of her wanting assurance she hadn’t been alone in what she went through.

Knowing it would derail all the progress she had achieved getting him to never again speak of it, she braced her hands onto the arms of the chair, ready to propel herself up to make a visit to Michael’s office to ask about his recollections of their journey. At the moment it was imperative she knew if he remembered going to the apartment and meeting Gabby.

In the second it took to push herself up, the ping of an IM on her computer pulled her back into the seat.

A quick glance at the screen and then the familiar smile sent from across the office bullpen and it no longer mattered. Alone or not in her experience, the end result was the same.

JIM9334: Where should we go to dinner tonight? Cugino’s, Glider. Your choice.

No need to ask Michael. Whatever happened, happened. Once more it was Randall's advice she heeded. It was time to concentrate on her future.

The mystery of Gabby, she chalked up to one more unexplainable phenomenon that occurred when she returned to her own time. Just like she had no explanation for the way her hair no longer frizzed up as it dried. Even without a blow-dryer, ever since the reunification with her other self, her locks seemed to, all on their own, form into bouncy, shiny curls around her face.

Or how her eyesight was suddenly perfect, even without the corrective lenses she’d worn ever since she was a child. Warned by the paramedic that those wearing contacts should remove them immediately, she wasn't sure what she would discover when she tried to remove hers. When she found none in her eyes, she wasn't all that surprised. And though they still burned from the pepper spray, when the irritation eased up, her sight continued to lack the Gaussian blur that had always been there when her lenses weren’t.

A trip to the eye doctor over the next week confirmed it. Her vision, once 20/100, was miraculously now near-perfect and he was just as mystified as she was to discover it.

Actually, she wasn’t all that shocked.

She’d always believed in small elements of the super-natural, even if she fought with Dwight about the existence of sorcerers and superheroes. But ghosts and magical signs from the universe, those were miracles she held to be real.

Time travel was not among the things she thought to be possible, but now that she’d experienced it, she not only knew it was, but saw its purpose. 

What JK Rowling wrote, what Dumbledore said, it was true. Time was a mysterious thing — powerful and not without its dangers when meddled with but…

Just as in the book, if handled with care, playing with time was necessary to right the wrongs of the past, to fix the things that were not perfect.

Not the superficial things like her eyesight and her hair, but important things like her confidence. One more side effect that she noticed on her return was the loss of fear, when it came to speaking her mind or going for what she wanted.

She was reminded every time she looked up to see her painting displayed on the wall where Michael proudly hung it the day they returned.

A whole slew more were one floor below in the Café Disco that doubled as the art gallery she let Michael set up for her. She’d even sold a few to Oscar’s partner Gil, who was introduced to everyone about a week after Pam and Jim's office kiss. It was after that, Oscar decided life was too short and if Pam was brave enough to show her truth, so should he and he came out.

Gil seemed to like her experimental pieces most, claiming they showcased the honesty and courage that she let out from inside of her and by doing so compelled Oscar to do the same.

She planned to do more too. Posted in the mail were applications for art schools in Philly and New York. She knew it would mean a change if she got in but for the first time in her life, she was embracing the turbulence, knowing she could adapt to whatever adjustments it would mean for her.

And for them.

Looking out into the bullpen again she smiled to herself as she saw Jim read the IM she just pinged back to him.

How about we just take in and go back to my new place? One more box to unload and I'm excited to show you all that's in it.

Here on the other side of her mysterious adventure was the life she had long ago stopped living, and while she might never know what really happened while she stumbled through the two weeks of her past, she didn't much care anymore.

She had found herself upon arrival, and discovered that she could still hold on to who she was and also be in love because with Jim, the two weren't mutually exclusive. He loved her for all that she was and all he wanted her to be, but more importantly what she wanted to be.

She'd never known love could feel like this; never knew how happy she could be. Whether it was her own doing or the influence of an angel, a dream that guided her way or other mystical explanation, it didn’t matter to her how she got here, just that she did. She came back to a future where she could be her truest self and also be in love with Jim.

And that made all the difference.

---

They almost didn't get around to unpacking the last box. As usual they were distracted by other activities, but somehow, they managed to cool things off long enough to attend to it.

The box was one that had been packed up long before she went back to the home she once shared with Roy to gather up the rest of what she didn't take immediately following the break-up. It was the one that for all the years she lived with him, had stayed sealed and stowed deep in the closet of the spare room. It was in this container she stored the mementos of her childhood, the ones she brought with her to her home with him but in all those years had never unpacked. It was about time she did.

She saved this box for last, not even knowing what she might find in it, but exhilarated to go through its contents with Jim and share with him the parts of a long ago past that she’d forgotten defined her. 

Every item inside had a story. Jim was only too happy to hear them all as they sat spooned together on the floor, his gentle caress making goosebumps on her arms as she regaled him with her tales.

Until she came upon something she wasn't sure why she kept, an old jelly shoe, the kind she used to wear to the town pool. It was just the one, all glittery and yellow which let her to imagine it wasn't even hers. Yellow was always Penny's color, while hot pink was what her mom chose for her, she was never quite sure why, it always felt just a little too bold and bright.

"I remember those shoes. Larissa had them in every color. Gotta say, Beesly, I'm curious to hear the story behind you saving it."

Picking it up, Pam searched her memory for some reason she would have kept it, but came up blank.

"Yeah, I got nothing for you. Thing is, I'm not quite sure myself why it's in here. It's not even my shoe. I'm pretty sure this was Penny's."

Before she set it aside, she turned it over in her hands. What she found didn't quite explain how it came to be in the box but made her smile bright all the same.

Embedded into the underside of the shoe was a small pair of silver wings.