Someone is writing it down.
Not for revenge. Not for money. Not for justice — justice has a legal budget and theirs is empty.
They’re writing it because the settlement bought their silence but didn’t buy their memory. The non-disparagement clause covers what they say in public. It doesn’t cover what they write in a notebook at the kitchen table at midnight.
The writing is the thing the institution can’t restructure. Can’t put in a file. Can’t eliminate the position of. It exists because a person with a non-disparagement clause still has a pen and a story and the specific, stubborn belief that writing it down is worth something even if nobody reads it.
Some people get fired and move on. Some people get fired and write it down.
The institution eliminated a position. The person became a writer.
That wasn’t in the restructuring plan.