Severe writers block is why this is coming so late. I had an idea of what I wanted to happen but I couldn't get it down. And then when I did, I hated it. I think I rewrote the beginning like seven times. Whatever. I still am not happy with it but here it is.

--

Jim was in the car twenty-seven minutes and forty-two seconds. He swerved off the road four times and spilled his coffee on his pants twice. He pushed away the feeling of guilt and hurt more than he could count. He pushed away the image of her crying even more.

He had told himself last night that he would stop caring. That he would be numb to her and feel absolutely nothing but that was seemingly harder than he expected. He thought of her even more. The way she looked when she smiled, when she cried. He envisioned the bruises on her back and the cut between her shoulder blades at the most inopportune moments and he could feel the well of emotion stirring in his stomach.

He almost pulled over ten minutes away from the Dunder Mifflin building for fear of throwing up. There had been a continual taste of bile in his throat since breakfast.

He pulled into the parking lot and saw that most of the spots were already taken. He tried to keep his eyes from wandering to the spot that Roy's truck usually occupied but he had no will power. The truck sat there, lonely and cold, with only a tree as company.

Jim heaved a sigh and climbed out of his car, willing his hands to stop shaking so much.

Thirty-six steps he took to the front door. Twenty-five seconds he spent exchanging pleasantries with the security guard. Two minutes in the elevator and four times he felt like he was going to throw up all over again. The doors opened and he felt a feeling of immense fear spread through him.

He looked down the hall and to the entrance of Dunder Mifflin with intense emotion in his eyes. He had half a mind to just press the one button with a star next to it and carry himself back home.

He took ten strides to the door and swung it open, plastering a look of contentment on his face.

It slid off when he saw Ryan sitting at Pam's desk.

He walked by it stoically and sat down at his own, plopping down his briefcase on the top of his desk. After several minutes of just sitting there, the stare of Dwight from his own desk got to Jim and he looked up.

"What?"

Dwight's eyebrows rose even higher on his head. "You are still wearing your jacket. If you are hiding any weapons within your pockets or layers of fabric, I assure you, it will be wise to not use them, I am a black belt."

Jim didn't answer with a snide comment. He didn't laugh at Dwight's ridiculous comment. He didn't raise his eyebrow in question. He just slipped off his jacket and let it slide to the floor in a heap by his feet before typing something into his computer and resting his chin on the palm of his hand.

Dwight looked from Jim to the coat then back to Jim with his mouth slightly agape, and then narrowed his eyes as if he were expecting a live animal to leap out of the folds of Jim clothing and attack him.

Jim didn't know what he was typing. Something about paper to some supplier, or customer, or warehouse, he couldn't remember. All he knew was that he was numbly typing numbers.

He heard a disturbance behind him and turned to see Dwight poking his discarded jacket with a ruler from the inside of his desk.

He rolled his eyes. "Dwight, what are you doing?"

"I'm checking your jacket for explosives."

"With a ruler?"

Dwight looked up at Jim then back at the jacket. Jim rolled his eyes again and leaned down in his chair to pick up his coat. Dwight immediately recoiled and pushed his chair back several feet, looking at Jim with wide eyes.

He stood up, jacket in hand, wiggled in front of Dwight's face, then turned around to hang it up on the coat rack. As he turned, he was greeted by Roy, standing no more than three feet away from him.

Jim stepped back slightly, muttering a curse under his breath at Roy's sudden appearance. He pushed past him without saying anything, making his way to the coat rack. Roy followed.

"Where is she?" He said quietly, anger coursing through the words.

Jim stood, his back still to Roy and his hands resting on the coat rack, confused. "Where is who?"

Jim turned around to look at him and was met with Roy bunching some of Jim's dress shirt in both hands and slamming his back against the wall, causing the coat rack to fall. The entire office went silent.

"I said, where is she you son of a bitch?" He yelled, his face becoming red and suddenly Jim realized what had happened. Pam had left Roy again. Only this time, he had actually noticed.

Jim vaguely heard Ryan calling security. He pulled himself out of Roy's grip. "I have no idea what you are talking about." He spat.

"I know you know where she is and you're going to tell me."

"Or what?" Jim said condescendingly, letting his anger get the best of him. The entire office was watching with wide eyes. Accounting had come up from the back and was watching carefully. Angela was blatantly observing from overtop her cubicle.

Roy swung and his fist collided with Jim's jaw. Jim stumbled but recovered, not losing his footing. He tasted blood in his mouth as he punched back. He hit Roy next to the eye and Roy crashed into the desk causing the jellybeans Pam had set up to go flying across the carpeting.

He used the desk to brace himself and gave Jim an incredulous look.

Jim gave a bitter smile. "What, you aren't used to someone punching back?"

Roy made to swing again but was interrupted halfway by Dwight jumping on his back. Jim watched with surprised and somewhat horrified eyes as Roy fell to the ground, Dwight on top of him.

Dwight held a struggling Roy down, his eyes wide while screaming, "I got him! I got him!"

Security rushed in and pulled Dwight off of Roy and Roy out of the room. An eerie silence was draped over the room. Jim put a hand up to his mouth and stemmed the bleeding. Dwight corrected his glasses. Michael took a step from his office doorway to where Jim was.

After another beat of silence, he proudly declared, "Let's hear it for Jimbo, taking out the warehouse man!"

He began to clap as Dwight glared at him. Michael let his hands drop to his side and coughed, retreating back to his office. Everyone soon followed, going about their activities, having enough excitement for one day. Dwight watched them retreat with worried eyes.

"Wait! Wait!" He rushed forward, turning Stanley around so that he was looking in his face. "You saw that, right? I was the one who saved Jim. I was the one who took out Roy who was crazed with anger."

Jim backed away quietly and took his coat off the hook, slipping out of the door. The last thing he heard before the elevators door closed was Dwight screaming, "It was I!"

--

Pam stood in front of the mirror quietly and extended a hand. She touched her reflection carefully, as if the mere hint of physical exertion would cause the glass to shatter and fall to the floor.

She let her hand drop to her side uselessly. She let her eyes trail off the mirror and to the wall where a small dent had been made. She thought back to last night when she had thrown her cell phone at it as hard as she could, watching as the plastic pieces spread over the room.

Roy had tried calling her three times last night. She had successfully slept through the first, ignored the second, and by the third call, been successively angered. Everything had built up in her chest and as she hurled the device at the wall, she felt slight liberation, as it broke apart.

Small steps, that was the key.

But as the anger died away, it was replaced with a cold loneliness and an emptying sadness.

So here she stood, the steam rising around her in the bathroom, staring at her broken reflection. Her hair dripped around her shoulders and was matted to her forehead. The cut between her shoulder blades throbbed in succession and the new bruise on her hip was tender to the touch.

She sighed and grabbed a towel off the shelf and wrapped it protectively around herself. She walked into the bedroom and shed the blanket, climbing back into her clothes from yesterday. She had turned up the heat in the room for the previous night, she couldn't stop shivering.

She climbed back under the covers, pulling them up to her chin and squeezing her eyes shut. She felt the moisture roll down her cheeks and bit her lip.

She rolled over on her back and twisted the frayed edge of her shirt where it had been ripped around her fingers. Behind her closed eyelids, she couldn't stop the image of Jim from floating up.

Him smiling. Him holding ice to her face, concerned. Him yelling, that broken look on his face when he had admitted his feelings.

She had broken him, and in turn herself.

She laughed cynically to herself in the empty room as she thought about the irony in the statement. Roy had spent years beating on her and she had never felt so broken as she did now.