Business was booming at Scoopreme Sundaes.
Not only was the brightly colored parlor filled with its usual gradeschool patrons ordering double-scoop sundaes, but the bell above the door tinkled nonstop with the constant flow of teenage couples sharing milkshakes, and adults ordering a cone or two for nostalgia's sake. The milkman stopped by for a cone, the mail carrier stopped by for a gallon to bring home to his wife, and even a few men clad in three-piece suits stopped by for a cone, though they dipped in and out, hoping not to be seen. All shared one common reason for being there.
The previous morning, Shay had placed a poster in the window with a Calloway logo blown up in gaudy green and white lettering, contrasted against a steel grey background, and ever since, the flow of customers had been so steady that Shay was hardly able to close the doors at the appointed time. This poster caught the eye of a certain eight-year-old girl on her way home from school, and she shoved the door opened vehemently, stomping up to the counter to one of her classmates who sat munching on a chocolate bar. She wordlessly snatched it from his hands and unfolded the wrapper to see the same Calloway logo on it.
"What are you eating this for?" Kellie asked, tossing it carelessly over her shoulder and barely missing the dog that belonged to a rather pudgy woman ordering two gallons of ice creams. "You told me at school that they tasted like wax paper!"
The boy snatched back his candy bar after he jumped off of the stool. "Well, my mum and dad bought a lot," he shrugged carelessly as he took another bite from it, and he began walking towards the door, through which Kellie saw his parents waiting in their car to pick him up. "We just can't stop eating them!" he explained with a grin and a shrug. "We have a whole case at home."
"But how 'bout Wonka bars?" Kellie asked, looking incredibly affronted and storming after the boy. A whole case? Surely she'd misheard that - no one changed their minds so quickly over something they had been absolutely mad about just days prior without a good reason. "They're your favorite!"
"Not anymore – I like Calloways," the boy said with a grin, chocolate smudged over the fronts of his teeth. He looked down at his chocolate bar and held it out in Kellie's direction. "This one's a Choco Mocha Charger, try it!"
Kellie narrowed her pretty little eyes and smacked it clean out of the boy's hands yet again, and this time, it landed on the ground by the counter. "No way!"
The boy pursed his lips and muttered something about drama queens before directly addressing Kellie again, saying, "Well, I like them."
"Well, then you can try this new flavor," Shay said with a saccharine grin as she came out of the back room clad in her apron with an ice cream cone in each hand. "Here, both of you – it's called Bait-and-Tackle Brownie."
"I hate it!" Kellie squealed, not even accepting the ice cream from Shay – Kellie very much cared about Alyssa, and anything that Alyssa cared about was Kellie's concern as well; Kellie knew very well that Alyssa cared and Willy Wonka, even at eight years old she could tell from the stories Alyssa told about their old school, and the great fun they used to have. Kellie didn't at all understand what made what Shay had done alright by any means. That, and even at her young age, she was suspicious of any candy that utilized fishing analogies.
The young girl's thoughts were interrupted by the television blaring with loud, elevator-esque music, and she looked up to see the commercial playing...
A gaggle of school children swarmed the shelves of a candy store, pushing and shoving to try and get their hands on whatever was on display. One girl held up her fist and yelled, "I got it!"
The screen cut to Cullen Calloway's handsome, toothy grin, looking directly at the camera with the swarming children still in the background. "We don't need Golden Tickets to keep them coming," he stated with a haughty wink. The girl from earlier ran up to Calloway and tugged on his sleeve, jumping restlessly to get his attention,
"What is it about Calloway Chocolates that we can't get enough of?" she asked in an overly chirpy voice. Calloway patted the girl patronizingly on the head and knelt down to look at her from eye-level.
"Magic, my dear girl. Magic."
Cullen Calloway was having a lunch with a potential business partner – very leggy, very blonde, and very young. It was the nicest restaurant in the area, and this business conversation had taken a very personal turn. The two were sitting very close to one another and he was about to order the woman another martini and swoop in for the kill when his personal assistant came trotting into the restaurant.
"Mr. Calloway, you're needed in research and development," she said. Cullen looked at his potential business partner and flashed her a smile in apology before following his assistant up the block to the large, ornate brick building that housed the entire Calloway Chocolate operation.
"This had better be very good." Cullen said shortly as he and his assistant boarded the elevator to the research department in the basement. The halls were cold and sterile here – anyone who was familiar with the Wonka factory would have been surprised to find that the two men were in the same business: Willy with his indulgent velvet coats, his lickable wallpaper, his Oompa Loompas, Cullen with his stark grey suit, his stone walls, his equally grey assistant.
The assistant unlocked the door to another room which was filled with equally colorless beakers and boilers, leading Cullen over to a particular boiler with the label "hot cocoa" across the front. "The new product does not seem to be working."
Cullen peered down into the beaker at the thick brown liquid and raised an eyebrow, squinting a bit as though he was not quite sure what he was looking for. "It looks perfectly fine."
"It's missing one ingredient," the assistant added, and at that, Cullen stood ramrod straight and turned around questioningly. The assistant obligingly pulled out another beaker, this one containing the same brown liquid, except there was something notably different about this batch, something obviously botched. Floating above the viscous cocoa in the beaker was a thin layer of livid green liquid, the only sprinkling of color in the entire room.
Cullen's eyes narrowed dangerously, as though someone had just brandished a knife towards him and he was ready to defend himself, by any means necessary.
"The final ingredient does not remain emulsified when heated," the assistant said stonily, and Cullen Calloway gave a stiff nod. This was a pitfall, a pitfall indeed, but he would have to do very little to remedy this situation. He would merely make quite sure that this little slip-up in the stark walls of the factory would never be uncovered.
"Scrap the idea," he said plainly, adjusting his plain black tie, eyes cold and unwavering although a strange, tight smile curled at the corners of his mouth. "A magician must have his secrets."
The sun had not yet risen over the Wonka factory, and the cool breeze of early morning blew in through the small opening of Alyssa's window. She slept best that way, with a bit of cold to wake her up properly in the mornings. However, this was not quite the hour she was accustomed to rising.
It came as a surprise then that Willy chose this very time to push open the door to her suite, and place a hand gently on her shoulder, giving her a gentle shake.
"Alyssa?" he said, the smile evident on his voice. The woman sleeping in front of him stirred slightly, and her eyes opened slowly. She looked up at Willy questioningly as she pushed herself up onto her forearms. "Alyssa, come with me – I've got something new. You'll just love it."
Alyssa gave her large brown eyes a few sleepy blinks, then squinted to get a look at the clock. "Willy, how can a person love anything at this hour?" she asked with a small yawn. "It's four in the morning."
"Even better," Willy said with a knowing, teasing grin as he took Alyssa's hand and gave her a slight tug, coaxing her to stand up. "It's best when the lighting's just perfect."
Alyssa obliged, standing up and following Willy out of the room. She was ready to follow him and keep a good look out for where they were heading, but once they reached the hallway, Willy stopped walking, and Alyssa found herself with a blindfold being tied gently over her eyes. Once Willy was assured that Alyssa could see absolutely nothing, he stood behind Alyssa and placed his hand on her shoulders, guiding her steps to wherever they were headed.
They were walking for what felt like nearly twenty minutes, and Alyssa could tell that they took a short ride on the Wonkavator. She tried a few times to ask Willy where they were going, but he'd merely shush her with a small laugh.
Alyssa heard a door creak, and after Willy guided her inside, she heard it shut again behind them. She was greeted by a rush of cold air, and a very clean, crisp smell. "What's going on?" she asked curiously, sure that she felt something wet on her face, something like rain. "Willy, it's freezing – did you take me outside?"
"Of course it's freezing," Willy chuckled jovially, his hand still resting on her shoulder, while the other lingered at the knot on her blindfold, ready to untie it. "We wouldn't want them to melt. Now, on my count. One –"
"Willy, I'm terrible with surprises, I really am –"
"Two –"
"I don't like not being able to see where I'm going –"
"Three – open." Willy said calmly, and gently pulled the blindfold off from over Alyssa's eyes. He relished in the amazed look on her face as she glanced around. It appeared that they were in a glass-ceilinged room on the roof, a room that appeared to be filled with snow. "Sugar snowflakes," Willy supplied before Alyssa even had to ask – he seemed quite smug, and appropriately so, as it appeared that his plan for Alyssa had come quite beautifully to fruition. And speaking of fruits —
"They're cherry-flavoured," Willy added, though it hardly seemed necessary, as Alyssa was barely listening out of amazement. He found himself musing silently how much she seemed enthralled by snow, as though she had never seen it before. She was so intently focused on her incessant and wonderfully frivolous twirling about, he could have said they were spinach flavored, and it hardly would have mattered. He was fascinated by her fascination, enthralled by her enthrallment, delighted by her delight – for so long, he had been sure that letting one into his factory, his sanctum, and his home would do nothing but ruin him. Somehow, after Charlie, his family, and now Alyssa Cabot, it seemed that perhaps the outside world still held a modicum of hope and happiness.
On impulse, Alyssa grinned, tilted her head back, and stuck out her tongue. "They're delicious!" she said with a delightful giggle – Willy found that he would have expected such a sound to come from a small Alyssa in an Oscar Jarvis uniform, and while anyone else would have found it quite strange coming from a grown woman, for Willy this was very much the Alyssa he had hoped to meet. He stepped forward and caught her gently by the hand, giving her a spin then pressing his lips to hers, which her now a bit cold and tasted faintly of cherries.
"Indeed," he said with a sly grin.
"I should have guessed you'd be so charming," Alyssa said with a quiet laugh, her cheeks tingeing slightly, the sight of which only caused Willy a bit more delight.
"Yes, you should have," Willy laughed, pulling off his coat and slipping it onto Alyssa's shoulders as he noticed she was a bit cold, having come out in her nighthings. "But I don't begrudge you for being pleasantly surprised."
"Won't it be terribly sticky when they melt?" she asked curiously, suddenly enraptured once again by the snow, picking a bit up in her hands, then throwing it up in the air. Willy grinned – a matter of days ago, he had thrown himself into work, very much convinced that the girl he saw before him no longer existed, that she had been lost to a world of mundane colors, of locks that played no music, of adults.
"They melt just like ice," he supplied, amusement glimmering in his eyes when she finally paused in her spinning to turn and face him. He noticed that she tiptoed when she walked, and he chuckled, shaking his head. "You needn't be so careful, I'm only testing them."
"Shouldn't we wake Charlie?" she asked, noticing that instead of near-pitch black, the sky had started to shift to a grand shade of royal blue. She sat on the ground and looked up at the sky, and Willy followed suit, placing an arm around her.
"This is his idea – he very much wanted me to show you," he said softly, speaking in a lulling whisper almost directly in her ear.
"He's a very sweet boy," Alyssa nodded with a smile, leaning her head back onto Willy's shoulder. He chuckled, and Alyssa couldn't help but nestle slightly into the soothing, vibration motion near his throat, and the warmth that resided there.
"Indeed he is, I'll have to thank him one day. I don't know what I'd do without him," Willy said, pleasantly surprised by the fact that Alyssa seemed so tantalizingly youthful right now. Looking up at the sky, he grinned at noted that the time was finally perfect. "Now shush," he laughed, "you'll miss the absolute best part."
Just then, a tinge of deep orange began to seep over the horizon, and Alyssa leaned more cozily into Willy's arms as they watched the sun rise. Gradually, Alyssa's tiny form grew heavier and heavier, until Willy was reasonably sure she had fallen asleep, just as the sun reached a point in the sky where the dark blue had completely vanished. He looked at the way the first light of day reflected off of her slightly damp hair, and how small she seemed while she was engulfed in his coat.
Things had gone back to exactly how they ought to be, Willy thought with a grin, and this time he had a very good feeling that nothing would interfere.
A/N's
Forgive me for throwing in a whole scene of pure fluff for Willy and Alyssa. Believe me, they deserve it, both for what I've already put them through, and what I'm about to put them through in the coming chapters. I actually do have the whole thing more or less planned out, so hopefully it tickles your fancy.
Sorry if I bored any of you at all by straying from Willy and Alyssa for more than half of this chapter. I assure you, there's a method to my madness.
I think I feel like taking a moment to talk about my choice to use WilderWonka instead of DeppWonka. Now, I myself am an immense Johnny Depp fangirl, but I think that in a lot of instances, most of the allure behind DeppWonka is merely the fact that it's Johnny Depp behind the wig and pasty makeup. I simply enjoy the fact that WilderWonka is so multifaceted – he can pull off the role of a genius/social recluse, and I imagine that someone that successful would need to be a bit more charming and insightful. I guess I find WilderWonka a lot more believable, and hence, I have a much stronger drive to write him.
Also, now that I have a bit more time on my hands with Spring Break and all, I'll take the time to show some appreciation for some of my readers.
First of all, Yva J., has given me an amazing amount of constructive criticism, especially in pointing out the points where my fingers were a bit quick and I never caught my typos. I'm immensely glad you thought the last chapter was the best so far, I really liked writing it. Also, to sparrowed, for always being so faithful and enthusiastic in reviewing this story, and for always rooting for Willy & Alyssa. I'm sure they'd appreciate it, hee! Also, to my newest reviewer, Ox King, for reviewing and making your presence known. It's nice being able to match a name of some sorts to the hit count on the story, so if you're reading, please drop a review! Really. Hee! Thanks!
Cheers!