I don't own the Office or any of its characters.

Warning: mentions of sexual assault, assault and battery, physical and verbal abuse

I alternate between nauseous anxiety and adrenaline-induced hyperventilation on the drive home. Inwardly I'm an anxious wreck because I'm reliving the worst day of my whole life, and Jim is going to see all of it. With the addition of this security video he'll literally be seeing every part of that awful day, which is more than I had anticipated this morning when I told him about my original recorded testimony. The idea of him actually seeing Roy hit me…this, I didn't want. For that matter I don't know how I'm going to watch that video with him, to really relive the moment again.

I press my forehead against the steering wheel once I park, trying to take deep breaths and calm down before I legitimately have a panic attack. The knock on my window nearly sends me spiraling, and I look up at Jim with tears clouding my vision.

He opens my door and silently reaches across to unbuckle my seatbelt, grabbing my purse from the passenger seat in the same motion. He steps back and allows me to shakily climb out of the car before pulling me gently into his arms. I find that I don't feel as anxious when I'm squeezing him tightly, so I keep my arms around him as we walk to the front door of our apartment.

Jim unlocks the door and lets me go inside first. On autopilot I walk into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea like I always do when we come home from work, and it's then I see my unfinished breakfast sitting on the counter by the sink. I should probably eat something, just so that my blood sugar won't be so low and I wouldn't be so shaky, but I think I'd throw up if I ate anything right now.

My hands are shaking visibly now as I hold the teapot under the sink to fill it with water. I set it on the burner with a loud clatter and in the next moment hear Jim's footsteps and feel his arms wrap around me. He reaches around me to turn on the burner and covers my hands with his. "It's going to be okay," he whispers, keeping his arms around me with a firm pressure that calms my frazzled nerves.

I can't stop the tears now, and when I let out a quiet sob Jim turns me in his arms and holds me close. I sniffle softly into his button-up, already regretting the makeup stains I know this will leave. "I never wanted you to see this," I say, my voice loud and hysterical in the quiet of the kitchen. "I know you're going to hate yourself, you're going to think you should have seen what was happening, but you're the person I hid it most from because I loved you even then and I never wanted you to feel responsible and I'm ashamed—"

Jim's soft, gentle kiss stops the frantic words that are pouring out of my lips. He pulls away just a hairsbreadth and I draw in a deep, shaky breath that ends in a gut-deep sob. "He made me feel like I wasn't worth anything."

His cheek is pressed against my forehead and I can feel his tears now as he gathers me impossibly closer. "You are worth everything to me," he responds in a tear-choked voice, and my heart swells with the love for him that's always consuming me.

We hold each other just like that until the kettle starts whistling. I pull away slowly, wiping my eyes with the backs of my hands and mindlessly making myself a cup of tea. I take another mug out of the cupboard and gesture with it to Jim. "Ready to change your ways?" I ask with a smile like I do every afternoon when we come home. The joke never fails to make him smile.

This time he lets out a delighted laugh, rather like when I told him I loved him for the first time and I know he's thrilled that I'm up to joking. He fakes a contemplative look for a moment before shrugging. "You know, Beesly, I think I am." He holds up a hand at my huge smile. "Just for today. Don't go getting any ideas."

I snicker and make him a mug just like I make mine, not knowing how he likes it because he's never wanted tea before. I study him expectantly as he takes a cautious sip and laugh at his grimace. "I'm only doing this because I love you, woman," he says in a mock-gruff tone.

I roll my eyes and grin loftily. "Yeah right, Halpert, you can't fool me. Even now your taste buds are conforming to my ways."

He grins fondly at me and shakes his head. "Yeah, you wish."

We're quiet for a moment and Jim sobers before gesturing to the living room. "Are you ready for this?"

I swallow hard and nod. "You love me, right?"

"Always," he replies immediately, his gaze so intense it melts my heart.

"I love you too," I respond. "And this is only going to bring us closer together."

He nods, turns, and walks out of the kitchen. I follow him.

As Pam and I walk over to the couch I think about how strong she was this morning when I was falling apart. And how I find strength within to help her when she's not very strong herself. Our weaknesses make us stronger.

As I slip the disc into the DVD player and join Pam on the couch, I think we're going to need our combined strength to get through this. I grab her hand and she squeezes mine in response.

In my whole life, nothing has ever hurt so bad as seeing Pam's face on that screen. Unconsciously I let out a soft groan, and Pam squeezes my hand again.

There are about fifteen seconds with Pam just sitting, glancing around the room as Amy and Keith talk quietly in the background, getting everything set up. She's in her old apartment at her kitchen table by the window that looked out on the parking lot. When we first started dating she would always stand at that window and wave at me as I parked and walked to the stairs.

She's right—this is much worse. There's blood pooled in and around her right eye, giving her gaze a reddish tint. Her eyelid and the skin beneath her eye are a myriad of colors—black, blue, purple. Her cheek is also badly bruised. Her bottom lip is split and she licks it unconsciously like it's causing her pain. She looks exhausted, but in her eyes I see a sort of purposeful strength that lets me know she's not broken.

"Okay, Pam," Amy's voice comes through softly, "for a full record of your injuries would you please turn and show us the back of your head?"

She nods and turns in her chair, lifting her hair to show a line of about ten stitches at the very nape of her neck. The skin is shaved and bruised and swollen, and I try to think of a time when she wore her hair up the rest of the year, and come up empty. I feel like I'm going to throw up and she hasn't even spoken yet.

"Thank you," Amy says as Pam turns back around. "Would you please state your full name and the date?"

"Okay," Pam agrees in a shaky voice. She looks into the camera. "My name is Pamela Morgan Beesly. Today is April 27, 2007."

"Thanks, Pam," Amy says. "You can begin whenever you're ready. Don't limit yourself—just talk until you feel like you've said everything you need to."

"Okay," Pam says with a small smile in Amy's direction. She glances down at her hands and takes a deep breath. "Okay," she whispers softly, seemingly to herself. Then she looks back up at the camera.

"I'm going to start off," she begins, "by saying that Roy Anderson, my ex boyfriend, only ever hit me once, and that happened the day after I told him Jim had kissed me, when he came to Dunder Mifflin and Dwight pepper sprayed him." She grimaces at the memory and pauses to gather her thoughts. "Jim Halpert is my coworker. He loved me once, and when I was engaged he told me that one night and kissed me. Dwight Schrute is also my coworker."

"So he'd never hit me before," she continues, "but it wasn't like he'd never been violent. Roy gets angry so easily. We were really happy when we were dating and for a couple months after we got engaged." She shakes her head. "But after that things really went downhill. After he lost his job as a bartender and started working at Dunder Mifflin, Roy started drinking way more than he used too. Soon he was drunk every night, hanging out with the guys at bars til like 2 AM every night." Several seconds of silence pass as Pam stares down at the table, and finally she takes a deep breath and shrugs, offering a self-deprecating smile. "Sometimes he was a nice drunk, saying how much he loved me and how beautiful I was and how he couldn't wait to marry me. But other times…he'd get angry at every little thing, like if someone cut him off on the drive home or I hadn't saved any dinner for him or…well, anything really."

I clench my jaw and take a moment to consciously stop gripping Pam's hand so hard that there's a risk I'll break it. She responds by squeezing mine harder, neither of us looking away from the TV.

"He'd yell for hours," the Pam on screen continues softly, "not letting me go to sleep, and say awful, terrible things, like how he'd kill me if I ever cheated on him, or how I was never going to be anything without him, or how some girl at the bar that night had been so beautiful, telling me all about her body." She scoffs and her brow furrows as she speaks earnestly. "His words tore me apart, because wasn't he supposed to love me? Hadn't he asked me to marry him?"

I can see her eyes shining with tears, and she's silent for a full thirty seconds. I hear the shifting of a body, maybe Amy about to speak, when Pam takes a deep breath. Her voice is soft and sad. "There were a lot of nights when I'd be asleep when he came home and he'd want to have sex. I guess you could call that rape, at least sometimes. A lot of times it was easier to just go along with it than to fight with him about why I'd said no." I hate the blush that's coloring her cheeks. She's ashamed, and Roy's the only one who should be. I'm surprised by her next words. "He always accused me of liking Jim when I denied him, and I hated fighting about that. Other times…" Her voice trails off and a tear slips down her cheek. A hand slides a box of tissues across the table to her and she whispers her thanks as she pulls one out and dabs at her eyes. Finally she speaks again. "Other times I'd try to say no and he'd just pull my pants down and shove in. It hurt so much. When that happened he'd be too drunk to even notice I was crying. I just felt so disrespected, so absolutely worthless."

My heart is being ripped out and stomped on and set on fire and—

I put my arm around Pam's shoulders and pull her close, holding her hand suddenly not being enough. She grips my hand tightly and leans her head against my chest. Her tears soak through my shirt.

Her voice is stronger when she speaks again. "Roy didn't really understand what it meant to consider the feelings of others. My arms were always bruised from when he'd grab me. That's why I never wore short sleeves, even in the summer. And a lot of times there were bruises in the shape of fingerprints all over my body from when he was too rough. Maybe he didn't know his own strength. Maybe he did know, and he knew how to use it."

I let out a groan, not even trying to contain it. All those days I was laughing with her and flirting with her, and she was going home to this douchebag who brutalized her. To think that she was bruised when we pranked Dwight and when I gave her the teapot and when…

Pam holds me even tighter at the anguished sound that rips through my throat, and I do the same. We're basically clinging to each other at this point and she hasn't even described that awful day yet.

"My coworker, Phyllis, got married a few weeks ago, and I guess the wedding was just really rough. People kept asking me if I was sad to be at a wedding when mine should have been the previous year, and Jim was with his new girlfriend, Karen, and the whole night just sucked overall. I called off my wedding because of a lot of things. Roy was mean and awful. But I'd also realized that I love Jim. The only problem is, he has a girlfriend now and seems really happy, so now I'm the one whose love is unrequited. It's awful." Her bottom lip is trembling and it breaks my heart to hear her so sad over me. "Anyway, I went to the bathroom to be alone for a few minutes and Roy came to find me. He was acting so sweet and concerned, and I was so tired of seeing Jim happy with Karen, so I left with him." She shakes her head. "It was a stupid, weak moment. I was so much happier apart from him than I'd ever been when we were together but I hated seeing Jim and…"

She sniffs and shakes her head as if to refocus her mind. "So I left with Roy. We went to the bar down the street to talk, and he asked if I would consider going out with him again. I said that if we did that we would have to be completely honest with each other, and that was when I told him about the casino night when Jim kissed me. He got so, so angry, started yelling right away and it just brought back all these awful memories. He threw his cup and broke a mirror, and I told him it was over and walked out. I was really scared because I knew how angry he was and I was worried he would follow me, but I could hear him still yelling and throwing things inside the bar. I was shaking the whole way home, and I locked all the windows and doors in my apartment. He called me five times, yelling awful things, calling me a slut and a whore. And around one he banged on my door, saying I had to let him in, but I told him I'd call the police if he didn't go away so he finally left."

Pam lets out a weary sigh. Her voice is monotone now, like she's trying to suppress all her emotions so she doesn't fall apart. "After the pepper spray Jim and Karen went to the bathroom to rinse his eyes out, and Dwight went to check on them for just a minute. I walked over to Roy, just to give him a wet paper towel for his eyes, and he backhanded me. I fell and hit my head really hard on the table next to the sofa."

The Pam in my arms shivers involuntarily and I gather her closer. "I'd never been so aware of how strong he was, how terrifying he was when he was angry, even though I'd been scared of him before, more times than I could count. No one was there but Roy, and he couldn't even stand, but I was still terrified. Dwight came out a few seconds later and ran over to me. He looked so angry, I knew I must have looked awful." A tear slips down her cheek and she swipes it away. "'Don't tell anyone,' I whispered," and her voice is awful and broken, "and I got my things and ran out before anyone else could see. Thank God the parking lot was empty and I didn't see anyone on my way to my car. I called Michael on the way to the police station and told him the whole story, emphasizing how I didn't want anyone in the office to know, especially Jim. He agreed to give me the rest of the week off to recover and promised that he and Toby would come by my apartment to help me file the report."

She lets out a shaky sigh, as if there's a weight off her chest now that she's finally recounted that awful day. "I reported everything that happened to the police, let them take pictures of my injuries, and filed a restraining order. Then I went to the hospital. I have a mild concussion, so my mom came down for a few days to take care of me. I also have a black eye, a split lip, and there's a tiny fracture to my cheekbone but the doctors didn't have to do anything, it'll just heal on its own. My clothes were ruined because my nose and head had bled so much, but I didn't care about that."

"I went to see Dwight yesterday and we sat on the porch of his farmhouse and drank beet tea. All he said was, 'Nobody else knows,' and then we just sat in silence. Well, I cried. And he held my hand." She shrugs, her gaze teary again. "It was actually really nice."

"Michael and Toby came to my apartment this morning which, in hindsight, wasn't really the best idea because I look the worst today. They were both so shocked and angry, and Michael begged me to let him tell Jim but I told him I'd quit if he did that. There's no way Jim can ever know. We filed a report with Jan on speaker, and she promised me that we were the only ones who were ever going to know about this." Her voice trails off and she stares off into the distance for a moment before looking back at the camera and nodding. "I think that's it." A few seconds later the screen goes black.

Pam's sobbing softly into my chest now and I shift until I'm leaning against the armrest and she's in my lap, her face buried against my shoulder. I hadn't thought anything could ever hurt as much as it had when I walked away from her after the casino night, but this is impossibly worse. So many times she needed someone to keep her safe, and I was blind.