(A.N. I just want to say a big THANK YOU! to everyone who has read and reviewed this story so far. You have motivated me to write every night, and without you, some of the big scenes coming up never could have taken place. Also, because I never said it; none of the characters belong to me, except Veronica, and I am only playing with them for the time being. )

Veronica's night was littered with dreams. Some were nightmarish interpretations of the harm she could possibly still inflict on Willy Wonka's once perfect world, others were troubled nonsense. And one dream, clear and still in her mind, one dream that was nearly forgotten by morning, was completely benign. She saw reflected in the pool of her subconscious a much younger Wonka. Mentally, he was still eccentric, still strange and socially awkward, Veronica already knew. But outside, physically, he was much younger. He was sitting completely alone at a long black table, constructed completely of black licorice. There were chairs all along its length and Veronica knew that the Wonka candy company must surely have once had a board of directors that met here. The table was littered with newspapers, and there was one lonely, discarded looking graph sitting on an easel beside him. Veronica floated, present but undetected by the forlorn looking boy, to look at the headlines. It became very clear to her that she was looking at a man who hadn't existed now for nearly fifteen years. He had died the day he closed the factory gates. And out of his ashes had sprung the shell of a man that she knew. Still very sad and very alone on the inside, but on the outside, nothing could be sunnier. Veronica realized that she was watching Willy Wonka, whole and as he had once been, die. And he was no older than she was now. She watched as he reached out a bare hand, limply snatch up one of the newspapers, and fling it lifelessly into the fireplace that loomed behind the head seat. Then he sat back down, and laid his head mutely on the table, slowly, deliberately, as if there was nothing left for him to do. He was completely alone in the big factory, aside from the ghost of Veronica, watching him. Several minutes passed, until Veronica was no longer completely sure this was a dream, for nothing had happened. But then the lonely young man before her reached out and grabbed her sharply by the wrist. He stared her in the eye for what seemed like an eternity to Veronica, his eyes still beautifully velvet blue, but hollow, empty, with dark circles ringing them, blatant shadows of death on his stark, pale face. It was clear he hadn't slept in weeks. And then something compelled her to speak. She didn't know quite what it was, but something so moved her about the pitiable form hunched before her, that she had to say something.

"You have to go on, Will." She said, but neither the voice nor the words were hers. "They still love you, and they always will. Even when that day comes when you feel you are alone completely, I will be here, and I will never go away, and you will always look to me to continue."

Wonka nodded, saying nothing, and then dropped her hand and fell into a quiet sleep, all alone at the table. And as Veronica walked away, just before she awoke, she passed through a long hall of mirrors, the passage between the directors' room and the rest of the factory, and she saw herself reflected in those mirrors, not Veronica Lightfoot, but a beautiful young girl with soft brown curls that flowed in a breeze she could not feel, and dressed in a long gown, black and silver, with silver vines trailing down her arms from her shoulders to the wrists. Her neck was encased in silver vines, and they trailed up into her hair. All of it was spun sugar. And, though she could not know why she knew it, she recognized the reflection. She was the Queen of the Sugar Plum Faeries, the closest thing Willy Wonka had ever had to a god.

Veronica woke, sweating and trembling, sitting bolt upright in bed. But some force lulled her back to sleep before she could even comprehend what she had dreamed, and by morning, she could remember very little except the tired look in the candymaker's eyes.