Hi been a couple years since I've written. just throwing this together to cope. don't expect much I'm just sad and love rashida jones and jenna fischer. enjoy.
Karen had felt a cavity in every moment passed after leaving Stanford. She heard it in everything she told the crew in that pseudo-confident voice she could hardly tolerate hearing herself speak in, in every word that fell between them onto the linoleum table in the bright hypnagogic light of the kitchen at 3:00AM. It permeated her subconscious like a nightmare does sometimes; violently, and with an intimacy so unequivocal it hurt.
She idolized Stanford. She idolized the movement of a backwards turning swivel chair that she would work so hard to get, and would turn into the back of a tousled curly head that she stared too long at. She had toiled over omitting sentences into her thoughts like, if only it had been another branch merged, and if only they had transferred us somewhere else, because those sentences made her feel stupid and obsessive. She wasn't stupid and she wasn't obsessed.
She was just heartbroken. That's all.
The morning of her first day in the office without Jim was slow and painful. When she got in she somehow expected him and Pam not to be there, like as soon as the weight of her involvement had been released, they would fly up and away into nowhere. But as soon as she walked in, there were the same soft pair of eyes that had greeted her every day. They took a double take and hesitantly smiled, immediately darting back down to the desk. Around the bend, the other pair of doll eyes did the same.
She inadvertently accomplished a lot of work; trying to look as busy and guileless as possible. That was on her list of things to keep her from going home; return to things as normal and if you look cool minded and unconcerned then you will feel it. But if anything, this was highlighting how much the separation had affected her. This wasn't normal. This was Scranton. Scranton was Jim. Jim was normal.
One of the worst parts of the day was how much she could tell Pam was staring at her. She could tell Jim felt too guilty to fully acknowledge her, but she could practically smell the pity that radiated off of Pam from across the room. It was a sickly sweet, burnt sugar scent. It made her queasy.
It was nearing 4:00 when she had had enough and she looked up and over to meet the eyes she knew would be there. She held their gaze even when the other's dropped guiltily.
The parade resumed when she was the first to leave the office. She even saw Michael's head peering at her from behind the lowered shutters of his office. The camera felt like it was burning a hole through her.
When she slammed the door of her car she was immediately ready to cry, but she forced herself to pull out of the lot as soon as she could with a desperation she'd never felt so strongly.
When she got back to apartment she screamed into her hands.
The peripheral image of Pam's stare clung to her like sap. It kept her from sleeping until 2:00AM when she took some Ambien and fell asleep to the sound of a voicemail that Jim had left her right before they had transferred about something stupid.