A/N: Wow, you guys... I can't describe the feeling I get when I write this story. It's as if these characters just tell me what they want me to say, and I do it. No, but it's really nice to not have a plan and just write where I feel the story's taking me. Everytime I finish a chapter I think to myself, "oh wow, I just wrote myself into a hole." And then Pam and Jim weasel me out of it :) Thanks for the reviews, guys, it's really encouraging!! Enjoy this chapter!


Sometimes, you have to make decisions. They may be hard and painful, but you have to make them anyway. They may irritate you to your core, but still, you have to make them. Decisions, choices, whatever you wish to call them, they're what life is about. There's no getting around decisions and choices. There's no backing out of them. By choosing to not acknowledge them, you make a choice. You can choose knowledgeably, meaning that you can choose after careful consideration of the alternatives and other options, or you can simply choose by default, taking the easiest possibility and sliding into it.

It had been four days since Roy had beaten her and Jim had come to her rescue. It had been an absolutely surreal four days. She'd refused to speak the entire time. Why? She didn't know. She just knew that it hurt for her to open her mouth. Speaking was painful, a chore. She hadn't heard her own voice in four days. She'd heard Jim's only, and she appreciated that. He hadn't tried to block her out, or let her have some space. He seemed to be able to tell what she needed by simply looking at her. He knew she needed interaction; he knew she needed to be silent, but she didn't need silence.

The four days had held many tears, many smiles, and many understanding looks and knowing glances between the two of them. She had woken up the first morning to a pair of eyes staring at her. His. Her body had ached, but the feel of his eyes on her had warmed her, slightly, and scared her, mostly. She knew he was different. She knew he wouldn't hurt or damage her in any sort of way. She knew she could trust him. It was just, at this point in her life, she seemed to be cynical and skeptical of everyone. She didn't think that was hard to understand.

Jim had been entirely wonderful as he took care of her. He'd bought her as much juicy juice as she could drink, knowing that sometimes she just wanted to go back to being a little kid. He'd made her lunch and dinner every night, made telephone calls for her, let her have the remote when she wanted to watch something. He was perfect. She hadn't told him so, of course. She hadn't uttered a single word to him since he rescued her. But she knew they had spoken. Not with their mouths, but with their eyes, their faces, their hearts.

Her mind drifted to the conversation they'd had that first night, after Jim came home from her old house. She couldn't describe the feeling that had formed inside of her when she saw Jim's face and knew that Roy had hurt him. It was as if some sort of maternal instinct had taken over, jolting an energy in her. She wanted to kill Roy at that moment. She wanted to make his death long, slow, and painful. She wanted to hurt him like she'd never hurt him before. It was a feeling she'd never gotten after he abused her, but maybe that's how Jim felt about her. Like the one thing that was innocent, beautiful, and perfect in this world was destroyed by a monster.

His confession after she broke down balling was stained in her mind. She knew that he loved her. Even with her tainted vision of what love is, she could see that he loved her. It was in the way he spoke to her, even when he was stern, there was a soft underlying in his voice. In the way he came to her desk for jellybeans multiple times during the day. One time, Toby had given him a bag of jellybeans--knowing how much he liked them--for his desk, but Jim had simply brought the jellybeans over to Pam and asked her to restock. And she knew then. She knew that he loved her. It may seem silly to think that she knew because of a bag of jellybeans, but their relationship had never been the type to communicate through serious ordeals.

Until that night. He'd told her everything. He'd completely bared his soul to her, and she couldn't say anything. He had told her that he had been in love with her for ages, that he had only told her so because he wanted her to be happy, and that when she had refused him, he had ran away because his love for her was eating at him alive. She had never heard someone talk about her that way. With such a ferocity to his love. The notion that his love for her was so great that it was eating at him awed her. It seemed as if, when he explained the thoughts behind it and the love behind his actions, all of her anger for him had melted away. She no longer wondered why he had left, and she no longer wondered if he had just come back because the branch had closed. All of a sudden, it was clear to her. His body may have come back because the branch had closed, but he, the Jim she knew, and dare she say, loved, had come back because he wanted to. He had come back because he missed her and loved her. Even though she had rejected him. Even though she had wronged him. He was able to take her in his arms and forgive her.

She got chills thinking about that kind of love.

She had wanted to assure him of her love after his declaration, but she couldn't speak. She wouldn't speak. She'd had to find a different way. That night, as she lay alone in Jim's bed, her mind was racing, thinking of what she could do to show him. He had generously given up his bed, taking the couch downstairs. She'd gotten up in the middle of the night, walked into the room and rubbed his back softly, waiting for him to wake up. At her touch, his body seemed to jolt alive, as if there was no other way for him to come alive except through her touch. He'd looked at her and she'd stood up, reaching out her hand, waiting for him to take it. When he did, she led him upstairs to his bedroom and crawled into bed, patting next to her. He smiled and crawled in beside her, taking her into his arms and holding her as if he'd never let go.

The next morning, she'd woken up to the smell of French toast, mixed berry yogurt, strawberries, and juicy juice. He'd ruffled her hair as he sat the tray down in her lap, and he'd crawled next to her in bed, ready to tell her about his day. That was what she loved about Jim. He always wanted to talk to her. He always wanted to tell her something, even something as trivial as a dream or a cartoon he watched in the morning, there was always something to tell her.

That afternoon, while Jim went out for a run, Pam took his car. She was afraid of what she was about to do, but she knew she had to do it. She had to face it at some point, and she had to do this for Jim. She had to show him everything she was feeling inside. When she pulled her car into the empty driveway of her house, she sighed, glad he wasn't home. She stared at the house for a minute, took a deep breath, and walked inside.

She couldn't believe, looking at the house, that she'd lived through this. She couldn't believe she'd allowed herself to be engaged to a man that would do this to their house, their home. She grabbed a plastic bag and slowly picked up the pieces of the glass bottles Roy had dropped on the floor, dropping them into the bag. She grabbed a few things off the shelf and put them into the bag too, before she headed upstairs.

When she got upstairs, she couldn't believe how wrecked and damaged it was. All of her belongings seemed to be on the ground, broken and shattered. Dried blood was everywhere. Her dried blood. She slowly picked up the pieces of her belongings that had shattered, and that's when she noticed it. Something she knew she had not thrown. Roy certainly hadn't thrown. Pieces of glass from a beautiful picture frame her mother had given her years ago after their engagement. The picture of she and Roy when she looked happy. Pam knew she hadn't been happy when it was taken, but she looked happiest, so that's what she used.

She fingered the broken shards of the frame, sliding them into her plastic bag. She knew that Jim had thrown it. When he'd come over to get her some of her clothes and necessities, he had seen it and thrown it hard against the wall. It had shattered because of Jim. She thought it was ironic, seeing as Jim had brought her shattered being into a person again. Or as much as could be expected.

She surveyed the room, collecting minor remnants of the night and then tied the bag up, heading downstairs to the secret cabinet Jim had built her for her art supplies. Roy refused to have art supplies in the house. He thought she was wasting her life dreaming of art she couldn't do or accomplish, and so he'd forbid it. One day, Jim had come over and installed some sort of cabinet that only she knew about. She'd kept her art supplies there, knowing that if Roy ever found them, it wouldn't be a pleasant experience.

She opened the cabinet and smiled lightly as she realized she wouldn't have to hide this anymore. Her body tingled with excitement as she took in the paints and charcoals she'd hidden. Her finger glossed over the paper, and she smiled, remembering how perfect art had always felt to her. She cleared out the cabinet, putting all of its contents inside another bag, smiling. She felt as if she could leave this place behind her forever. Most of her things, she didn't want. They had memories associated to Roy. Art was the only thing that Roy wasn't a part of. He refused to be a part of. She chuckled at the knowledge that the most inner and sensitive parts of her soul came out through her art. As she thumbed through it, she saw how unhappy she was with Roy. The memories came flooding back, and all she could do was keep staring.

She turned to leave, surveying the house one last time and waving good-bye, unable to speak once again. She headed back to Jim's house and climbed the stairs to his room ready to take on the world. And she sat on his floor for our hours, creating her masterpiece on top of an old piece of sturdy wood. When she was done, she carried it downstairs and gave it to him.

She watched as he touched it. An 8 ½ by 11 representation of her life with Roy. The colors of glass at the top of the wood piece were sharp, dark and demeaning, the ones from his broken beer bottles. She'd attached little red hearts made out of glass, broken in every way at the top, trying to show him how broken her soul had been with him. In the middle of the piece, there was a small black line. The bottom of the work was so much more welcoming and inviting. The background colored in vibrant water paints, periwinkle the most prominent. She'd attached clear glass all over the background, full red hearts adorned it. In the middle, there was a picture of her and Jim, smiling and laughing. She looked happy in the picture, and she knew she had been happy. It was a perfect representation of them. She'd put extra glass around the picture to create a makeshift frame, making painstakingly sure to only use the glass from the broken picture frame to surround it. In the left corner of the lighter part of her work, under the glass and straight on the watercolor, she'd pinned black stickers that spelled out one of her favorite quotes, "One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life." Directly under the picture in the center of the page, in her own red writing, she'd finished the quote, "that word is love." She'd loved the quote since she was in eleventh grade, reading Sophocles in her English class. Now, as she stood wavering between the broken dreams and hopes of one failed relationship and the dreams and hopes that seemed so bright in the other, she realized how much the quote rang true in her own life.

He had ran his fingers over it lightly, taking in every part of it, trying to imagine that this was her soul coming out in her artwork. He'd never loved a piece of art more than he loved hers at that moment. He knew she was speaking to him, maybe not in a conventional way, but her art said so much more. He'd placed the piece on the counter and hugged her tightly, whispering a soft 'thank you' into her ear. She smiled and hugged him back, heading upstairs to the bedroom. From the corner of her eye, she noticed his fingers linger extra long around the broken glass frame, as if his mind had just grasped that she was giving him all of the pieces and making a new life with them, with him in it.

The next morning, Saturday, she'd come downstairs to see her work hung on the wall and she smiled to herself, her heart beginning to grow wings. She and Jim had spent the entire day watching old movies, listening (he'd been talking), and playing board games. She'd missed him dreadfully while he was gone. She wanted so badly to tell him that, but she knew she couldn't speak. Not today.

This morning, Sunday, he'd caught her staring at the pictures on his refrigerator again. Apparently, the little girls he was so smitten with were his nieces, Charlotte and Anna. Charlotte was four now, while Anna was only two. They were adorable girls, both with blonde-brown hair and bright blue eyes. The way Jim's eyes lit up when he spoke about them warmed her body completely. They were his sister, Julie's children. Charlotte loved anything that had to do with princesses and tiaras. When she was little, Charlotte used to switch back and forth between being Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Princess Charlotte. There was no sign when she was going to change, she just did so randomly, sometimes in mid-sentence. It had always been up to Uncle Jim to revive her and bring her back to life. He was her prince charming. Apparently, one time Julie had called Jim because Charlotte had been Sleeping Beauty for hours and nobody could wake her up. Jim had driven the half hour drive to go wake Charlotte up, smiling the entire time. Anna was apparently really into teddy bears and hugs and anything that she could snuggle up with. When she was born, Jim had given her a little bear and now that she was two, the bear had lost nearly all of its filling. He'd told her the bear was named Pammy. Pam had always hated the name Pammy, but hearing that Jim had named his nieces bear after her was too cute, so she was able to forgive him. As he rambled on about his nieces for the good part of an hour, she felt strangely comfortable with him, as if she could truly be a part of his family. She smiled at the thought.

He'd gone up to take a shower, and that's where she stood now. Standing at the refrigerator door, eyeing the pictures of Charlotte, Anna and Jim. Her world seemed to open up when she saw the way he looked at those girls. She realized he was a man worth fighting for.

She sat down at the table, seriously thinking. She wanted so badly to open her mouth. To speak words to him. To find her voice, but for some reason, she couldn't. The thought of her opening her mouth scared her deeply. She thought about the last few years, how sometimes, when she opened her mouth with Roy, she'd get rewarded with a slap on a face or a cruel joke at her expense. She thought about how she'd stopped trying to talk to him, how she'd become a silent victim in their relationship. Words had never worked with Roy. Her voice was never heard.

She thought about how Roy had only taken the surface. Every time she talked, he had never been able to really listen to her, to pinpoint where she was coming from with the words she spoke to him. He had never read her, not like Jim had. With Jim, she didn't need to speak to communicate with him. He understood her in a different way, a way that was so remarkably amazing she wanted to soak it up.

She was afraid. She could admit that. She was afraid of opening her mouth, letting part of her soul out, and being rejected. She was afraid, irrationally, that it would hurt her when she opened her mouth. She was afraid, most of all, that she didn't have any voice left.

Decisions. They change the course of your life, and they change you. Simply put, they can either build or break down. They can teach you things you never could have learned any other way. There is no way to escape making a decision. You make one every minute of every day, whether you mean to or not. Decisions and choices, that's what life is about. Pam hadn't thought about deciding… Choosing to love someone. Choosing to walk away. Not until she met Jim. And now she knew. Love was a choice. It was a decision. You could fall in love, but you had to choose to remain in love. You had to choose to love someone. And it was a constant, uphill battle. And if you had to walk away, you had to choose to walk away.

She turned around as she heard the stairs creak. She stared into his bright blue eyes as he looked at her, his Old Spice fragrance filling the room. There he was, right in front of her. She stepped closer to him.

She made her decision.

"Jim," the words came out feeble, as if she hadn't spoken in days. She tested them out more, each time her voice becoming stronger and stronger until she recognized it as the voice she had before Roy. "Jim. Jim. Jim. Jim."

When her voice was strong like she wanted it to be, she looked up at him, staring into his eyes, wanting to show him that she was not scared. This choice didn't scare her at all.

"I love you." She said it with such a fierce voice that she half expected more to come out, but it didn't. As she said it, however strong her voice was, tears were spilling down her cheeks. She shrugged at the end of it, as if to tell him, 'that's the way it is. I can't help it.' He smiled and pulled her into his arms, so thankful to hear her voice. To know she was going to get better. She was going to heal. Knowing, she'd found it. What she'd been seeking for so long. Her voice.


A/N: Well?