The Last Word

Posted 1 June, 2008 in D: 2006, F: The Office (US), Pairing: None, Rating: PG13

Written for nomad_shan in the Yankee Fic Swap, December 2006. At the time it was plausible, but now it’s basically an AU. *shrug*

Dwight isn’t as happy at Jim’s goodbye party as he thought he’d be. Now that he has a guaranteed spot as Michael’s number two man, it isn’t as fulfilling as he’d thought. Morosely, he downs two cups of punch before realizing that someone has spiked it. Then he tries to close off the punch bowl, but no one’s having that. Michael tells him to stop being such a party pooper; Stanley gives him a scowl and pushes past him unceremoniously. No one has respect for the law; they’re all going to slide off the road and die. Idiots.

It’s just another excuse to get mostly drunk and say stupid things to one another. Darryl tells Jim to have fun on his trip to Austria. Angela makes her excuses and leaves early, and Bob Vance comes to take Phyllis out to dinner. Most of the time, Jim stands off in a corner pretending not to stare at Pam, who is pretending not to stare at him. This party, thinks Dwight, is worse than the Saint Patrick’s Day party when Creed threw up green beer. Everyone seems to sense it eventually and finally, when the punch bowl is empty, even Meredith staggers outside. Michael takes one look at the mess and disappears. No one’s left but the cameramen, and they do not help. Dwight begins to clean everything up, and is surprised to see Jim picking up the decorations.

“I thought you were already gone,” he says, snatching crepe paper out of Jim’s hands.

“It’s my party,” says Jim. “I’ll clean up if I want to.” Dwight eyes him to see if that’s a joke, but Jim just stares at him with a perfectly innocent face. So he stuffs the crepe paper in the trash and goes into the break room to rinse off the punch bowl. After that there’s not much to do but bag the leftovers (Michael will eat them for lunch tomorrow) and return the chairs to where they were supposed to be. Jim even helps with that, and then he picks up his bag and looks around the office.

“See you later, Dunder-Mifflin Scranton,” he says, and Dwight can’t tell if he’s sad about it or not. He can’t leave Jim with the last word, though. Schrute rule #2: Never let your enemy have the last word.

“I hope they like your little tricks up in Stamford.”

Jim smirks at him. “And I hope you and Angela consummate the love that dare not speak its name.” And then he mugs some idiotic face at the cameras as Dwight feels his mouth drop open.

“How — did you –”

“I saw you pull her behind your car one time after Poor Richards. And what you were doing… it was either some kind of tongue war, or….”

“Oh, very funny. Very funny.”

“Hey, man. To each his own.” Jim makes another stupid face and throws his bag over his shoulder and heads for the stairwell. He doesn’t look drunk at all; not even tipsy. What a jerk. What a double creep. What an enemy.

“Have a nice life, Dwight.”

Don’t let him get the last word. Don’t let him — “Make sure you check your shoes for scorpions!”

“What?”

“In Australia! Scorpions get in your shoes and then they bite your toes!”

“Uh … okay.” Jim waves at him. “Scorpions. Yep.”

As Dwight closes up the office and double-checks the locks, Jim’s stupid car peels out of the lot. “Just kidding!” Dwight says to the office doors. “I hope a scorpion crawls up your pants and bites you on the ass.” Last word, sucker.

two.

Jim sends Dwight a postcard from Australia. To be fair, everyone in the office gets one; but Pam’s is a pretty beach scene and Angela’s has a koala bear dressed up in a little outfit. Dwight’s is a funny color of off-white, and a piece of it is coming off… when he looks closer, he sees that it’s a square of toilet paper pasted onto a notecard. On the other side it says, “You were right! Toilets do flush counterclockwise down here!”

Furious, Dwight makes sure to take it over and shred it, as slowly as possible, as if he’s shredding Jim in the process. He tries to make Angela shred hers too, but she hangs onto it with a deathgrip. “Take your hands off my koala bear,” she says expressionlessly, so he finally gives up. He refuses to speak to her for the rest of the day, but it only hurts him when she ignores him back.

Damn Jim. Damn him and his Australian beaches and his toilet paper squares. But he isn’t going to have the last word. Dwight vows to send a postcard of his own; he just has to figure out what to say on it. Something just as good. Something that will knock Jim flat. But the chance doesn’t come and doesn’t come and weeks pass, and Jim has probably come back from Australia with a tan and a blonde on each arm. He is in Stamford now, and probably making himself indispensable to Josh Porter. Probably Josh Porter is sitting in his fabulous cushy office saying to himself right now, “I don’t know how I ever lived without Jim.” Bastard. Dwight calls up the personnel department in New York and finagles Jim’s new address, just in case. Schrute charm always works on underlings.

And then one day in July, Pam doesn’t come in to work. For three days, she is out sick. Michael wanders around doing whatever he wants and commenting vaguely about the bumps in the path of true love. After three days, Pam comes back to work and tells everyone quietly that the wedding is off, that she won’t be marrying Roy after all.

“But *why*?” asks Kelly repeatedly. She can’t believe, obviously, that there are people in the world that don’t jump at the first chance to get married that comes their way.

“I just –” Pam fiddles with her hair, looks down at her keyboard and then up and then down at her sweater. “I didn’t feel like it was the — the right thing to do right now. I want to take art lessons and I’m — not ready for… I’m just not ready to take that step.”

Later in the morning, Dwight happens to glance up from his desk over at her. She is just hanging up the phone, and although her voice sounds perfectly calm, Dwight is horrified to see that she is crying. When she sees him looking, she looks away immediately, and Dwight looks down at his sales orders and scribbles something meaningless with his pen.

That afternoon he goes out and buys a postcard from the newsstand. It says, “Welcome to Scranton” in white swirly letters. Sitting on a bench in the strong Pennsylvania sunlight, Dwight addresses it to Jim and then stops, chewing absently on his pen. Could this be seen as doing Jim a favor? Will it do something gross like bring Jim and Pam together forever, pledging eternal love?

Dwight smiles, an evil Grinchly smile. No, it’s too late for that. But oh, how he wants to make sure Jim knows what he’s missing. On the postcard’s blank back, he scribbles in capital letters, SHE DIDN’T GO THROUGH WITH IT. He underlines “DIDN’T” three times and then studies the sentence. Too cryptic? Perhaps. Underneath, where he might have signed his name, except Jim will know exactly who sent it after seeing six years of Dwight’s handwriting on reports, he draws a scorpion with a huge stinger. “I told you to watch out for scorpions,” he says. Schrute strikes again, and where you least expect it.

Jim will get this postcard on a sunny summer day, when he’s gotten home from work in his wonderful new office, and it will strike him in the heart. Which is where you want to strike your enemy if you can’t reach his eyeballs. And Jim will wonder whether he did the right thing, and wish he’d waited until the end of the summer to move to Stamford. And his sales calls will be half distracted, and his mind will be one big ball of regret, but the best part of all is, he won’t call Pam. He’ll talk himself out of it while he’s eating his stupid bagel at his stupid desk. He’ll think about giving her time to get over Roy. He’ll never make his move because he’s a coward, and cowards never learn Schrute Rule #1, which is, always go in for the kill.

Dwight puts the postcard in his trenchcoat pocket to wait for a stamp and then he walks back to the office, whistling the Star Wars theme song. When he comes out of the elevator and sees Angela, he can’t help the huge smile that crosses his face. She’s gonna get some tonight, whether she realizes it or not. He slaps a stamp on the postcard and puts it in the outgoing mail. Company resources well allocated! What a sweet feeling: it’s good to be enemies again.

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