She sighed as she stared sadly at the factory on the other side of the town. It was starting to look new again; headlines on every newspaper in town declared, "Wonka Factory Revived Thanks To Bucket!" as if the factory hadn't been working at all the whole time it had been in a shadow.

Lilly Redwood stuck her hands in her coat pockets, blinking away the falling snow from her eyelashes. Lots of unhappy memories were brought on by the curling smoke of the factory; by the freakishly unwelcoming iron gate in front of it. Memories of Lilly's lost childhood. She had never forgotten her best friend.

Even though, mockingly, he literally lived ten minutes away from her.

Lilly frowned at this thought. She was rather peeved all of a sudden at the fact that she lived only a few minutes away. But she lost all anger when she realized that she'd never even seen him outside the factory. At least, she hasn't.

This almost brought an onslaught of tears, but Lilly turned away from the factory and quickly walked towards the florist's shop. She knew that smelling the flower she was named after would make her feel a little better.

And as oddly close to getting high as that sounded, Lilly also knew that she had never really been happy since Willy left her. They were very close, and he left a hole in Lilly's heart. It seemed he had forgotten who she was.

Lilly walked into the shop and forced a smile at George, the clerk. "It's a rather gloomy afternoon, isn't it?" she said conversationally.

George smiled back and nodded, but then he just kind of stared at Lilly. They both stopped and looked out the wide store windows.

There were two Wonka trucks driving past the store towards the candy store.

"And it just got gloomier," Lilly muttered, turning away from the window. She sat down on a bench beside the lilies and sighed heavily, resting her forehead on her hands.

George looked at her, his face etched with sympathy. "The thing I've learned is that you have to let things go, no matter how painful it may be. Some things are better for your health."

Lilly looked up a little and leaned over to smell the lilies. She took in the sweet smell briefly, but then felt another onslaught of tears headed her way. "I just miss him."

George looked about the nearly empty store, his gaze lingering on one other customer. The stranger was over in the rose section, and he was staring oddly at the dead roses.

George ignored him. "You never exactly told me who this person you've been talking about is, Miss Redwood. I'm rather curious."

Lilly sighed and shrugged, taking a lily and leaning back on the bench. "Just…a friend I had when I was a young girl."

There was a moment's silence, and then a different voice rang in.

"I don't like roses. The smell usually gives me a headache."

George frowned over at the stranger. "Then…why are you engulfing yourself in roses?"

The customer looked up at George, but his eyes couldn't be seen due to the fact that he was wearing very large goggle-like sunglasses. He was also wearing a top hat.

"Because," he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "It would be silly if I were to say such a thing if I were over in the marigold section, now, wouldn't it?"

Lilly frowned, but George spoke up first. "Did you need help with anything, sir?"

The customer gave George a quiet smile, bearing pearly white, freakishly straight teeth. "No thanks. Although I might be interested in buying a few of those lilies over there."

Lilly blinked. "These?"

The man nodded. "I rather like those flowers, and they're the only kind I do like."

This made Lilly's heart jump into her throat. She was being paranoid, but she remembered when she and Willy were kids, he said the lily was the only flower he did like.

But there was no way possible this strange man could be Lilly's long-lost childhood friend.

George told him how much the flowers would cost, and then he teasingly asked Lilly if she would mind giving away her prized possessions.

"No," Lilly said quietly.

But after the man paid for the flowers, he sat on the bench next to Lilly. He kept his hands on a strange-looking walking staff, and he looked at the ceiling.

"Why are you so sad, ma'am?"

"No reason," she sighed as George went to the back room to retrieve something of unknown identity. But Lilly found herself confiding in this total stranger.

"I miss a really good childhood friend of mine. I haven't seen him in several years." She waved her hand vaguely. "He went off to become a famous candy maker. He's got his name written on almost every piece of candy in almost every single candy store in the world now. I'm afraid he's forgotten who I am."

The stranger looked at her, but stayed silent.

"I'm not sure what hurts most," Lilly continued. "To never see a best friend again, or to have the best friend completely forget who you are."

The stranger finally spoke. "Well…."

"Lilly."

He raised his eyebrows. "Well, Lilly, I'm sure your friend hasn't forgotten who you are. You seem too nice of a young lady to have been forgotten."

Lilly turned her head to stare oddly at the man.

He continued. "This friend of yours," he mused, looking away from Lilly and tapping the walking staff on the ground once. "You said he is a candy maker. Mr. Wonka, I assume?"

Lilly nodded, her eyes starting to fill with tears. The two were silent for the next minute, and Lilly failed to notice that George was still in the back room.

The man picked up conversation again. "I know a poem that I think will cheer you up, would you like to hear it?"

Lilly—who was staring at her lap and trying to will the tears back into her eyes—didn't say a word, but she didn't give any sign of refusal.

"Alright," he said, "it goes like this: 'Lilly Lonka, next to Willy Wonka, wants to be famous, she's gotta be a waitress, because that's how the famous get into the pages.' It's something I came up with when I was a small boy. It's not that funny, but it caused a few accidents."

Lilly almost died of shock.

The stranger slowly looked at her, smiling, and he found himself staring into the wide eyes of the woman sitting next to him.

"Like I said, I'm sure your friend hasn't forgotten who you are." Then he frowned questioningly. "What did you say your name was?"

Lilly couldn't stop staring. That poem was told to her by Willy, and it had caused at least one accident; Lilly had fallen out of the tree they were sitting in and got a nasty scrape on her shoulder, just because she was laughing so hard at the pure stupidity of the poem.

"You're…you're Willy, aren't you?" she asked, her voice betraying her and cracking at the name. She was in pure shock.

"Let us talk outside of this store; the fumes are sort of giving me a headache."

Lilly sprang to her feet and Willy stood up, calling over his shoulder, "Thank you very much, Mr. Barnes!"

"You're welcome, Wonka!" George called back from the back room. "Where are those blasted bug sprays!"

Lilly turned around and stared at the back room door, not paying attention to where she was going, and ran right into the door to the shop.

Willy turned around and watched Lilly. "I've actually done that quite a few times myself." He walked back into the shop and helped Lilly up.

When Lilly placed her hand in Willy's purple-glove-clad one, she looked up and into his eyes…at least the sunglasses. She still couldn't believe this was him.

"You've changed," she whispered, standing up, not completely finding her voice.

"Not as much as you have, my friend," Willy said, and he became oddly still. He was obviously looking her over a few times.

Lilly placed her hands in her pockets and looked at the factory over Willy's shoulder. "You've come out of your…cage."

"I've always been out of my cage," Willy said with a flourish of his hands, having snapped out of a reverie of some sort. "Well, since I met Charlie, I've been out of my cage. Have you heard of him? Little Charlie Bucket?"

Willy had turned to walk towards the factory, and Lilly followed him out of instinct. "I…yes, I've heard of him."

Willy turned to look at her, not stopping his ever-so-slightly limping stride. "I am personally insulted that you thought I had forgotten who you were. I thought about you every day! You were a very good friend of mine, Lilly. People don't exactly forget best friends." He grinned and giggled. "At least, not when they graciously spend a fraction of their allowance on boxes of chocolates for the other."

Lilly smiled, remembering very well when Willy became addicted to the drug that chocolate was. She had, indeed, spent a very small fraction of her allowance money on the candy for him—he couldn't buy it himself, or his overly dental-hygienic father would've noticed.

"But you hadn't just been my candy-buyer, no; you were very kind to me in all sorts of ways." He tapped his chin with his other hand. "You were my only friend, because none of the other kids would talk to me since I had that nasty metal stuff all around my face…." He looked at her again. "I've never met anyone as sweet as you had been to me, Lilly."

Lilly tried hard not to, but she soon found herself blushing more and more with every compliment Willy gave her. Then they arrived at the factory.

"Well," Willy said, leaning on his walking staff and looking up at the factory. "You have two options. You can both a) come inside with me and visit, or b) leave and be a mean person." He smiled at her.

Lilly was startled out of her reverie at the question. "Oh. Erm…I'll…I've really…."

"Come on in," Willy said helpfully, tapping the gate with the staff. It opened slowly, and as soon as it got wide enough for a human to fit through, Willy went into the large courtyard in front of the building. Lilly followed, still reeling over the fact that she was actually talking to her long-lost best friend. "The Oompa-Loompas won't bite."

"I've heard of those…the tabloids have said you have those working for you…."

"They're not just my workers, Lilly," Willy chimed, approaching the doors to the factory. "But they're also my friends."

Once Willy opened the doors, however, Lilly did something without thinking.

She sprang forward, tapped Willy on the shoulder, and when he turned around, she engulfed him in a tearful hug. Willy started to laugh, and they both fell over inside the factory.